A wealthy New York couple who thought they had hired the “perfect” nanny to care for their newborn daughter have now accused the same woman of turning their idyllic upstate life into a nightmare by squatting in their $1 million farmhouse—and wreaking havoc on the property.
Jamie Carano Nordenström and her husband, Philip Nordenström, stumbled across a crumbling farmhouse in Hillsdale, NY, in 2013—and originally intended to use the property as a weekend home, they told The Cut. But after falling in love with the peace and quiet of the Hudson Valley, they decide to relocate full time to the abode, after carrying out renovations.
However, their picture-perfect lifestyle was shattered, they claim, in 2024, after they hired Barbara Molnar, a mother of four, as a part-time caregiver for their newborn daughter.
At the time, Molnar’s credentials suggested that she was everything they were looking for—and more—including the ability to speak fluent German, extensive child care experience, and a willingness to work around their schedules.
Initially, they hired Molnar on an 18-hour-a-week schedule, paying her $25 an hour. But Jamie says they continued to look for full-time help.
Jamie said that Molnar came across as the perfect nanny, recalling that she was “definitely absolutely in love” with children and recounting how she would read her daughter German books to help with the couple’s dream of raising a bilingual child.
But things began to sour between the two women in December 2024, when Molnar requested to take up residence inside the Nordenströms’ guesthouse—an offer that they had originally made in their Nanny Lane ad, when they first started looking for child care.
Though Jamie says she was apprehensive about having Molnar living on their property, she ultimately agreed after the nanny revealed that her living situation at the time was proving very difficult for her.
“Jamie, a Democrat and member of the Hillsdale town board who had run on affordable housing, didn’t ask questions,” The Cut noted.
However, eager to protect their interests, Jamie and Philip agreed to allow Molnar to live in their guesthouse rent-free, explaining that there was never any agreement put in place that would grant her status as a legal tenant.
Still, Jamie claims she went above and beyond to make the guesthouse as welcoming as possible, redecorating the space and adding new furniture, while also hiring a cleaning service to attend to the property a few times per month.
But the mother of one says Molnar became a different person after moving into the home—defying all of the rules that the Nordenströms had put in place, beginning by ignoring their request that the guesthouse remain pet-free by turning up on move-in day with her 12-year-old Labrador.
Jamie further alleges that Molnar asked that her youngest son, who was at boarding school, be allowed to spend some time with her over the holiday season—only to discover that he was still living there weeks later.
She accused Molnar of failing to clean up after herself, of leaving dog poop in the backyard, and of trespassing on their neighbors’ properties while out for walks with the Nordenströms’ daughter.
Though she insists and her husband tried to make the best of what Jamie describes as a “strange” situation, even paying Molnar to cook for them on a few occasions, things soon went from bad to worse after the Nordenströms returned from a vacation in Sweden in June of this year to find what they describe as a party taking place in their pool area.
According to Jamie, a group of teenagers was gathered in and around the pool, with no sign of Molnar—whose son, when asked, said she was sleeping in the guesthouse.
Jamie claims that they discovered a mess in and around their main residence—including dog hair that was clogging up the vacuum, used bed sheets, clothing in the sauna—and the next days says she awoke to Molnar banging pots and pans around in the kitchen.
When she confronted Molnar, Jamie alleges that the nanny did not apologize, but rather grew angry about the fact that the Nordenströms had embarrassed her son in front of his friends.
Molnar, however, hit back at Jamie’s accusations, telling The Cut that her side of the story had been twisted—and insisting that she was given permission by her employers to have people over at the house when they were out. She added that she chose to host the gathering of teenagers while they were on vacation not because she was trying to be sneaky, but out of respect for their personal space.
However, Jamie says that the so-called party was the straw that broke the camel’s back, revealing that she and her husband fired Molnar soon after the event.
Despite insisting that she and her husband offered to help the nanny pay rent at a new home—while also agreeing to pay her regular salary through the end of the month—she says Molnar invoked her tenant’s rights and refused to leave.
“We knew, at that point, that she had engaged with us to gain access to our home,” Jamie claims.
When she began digging into Molnar’s background, Jamie says that, while she found no evidence of a criminal record, there were other examples of disputes with her former landlords, including one case in nearby Ghent, NY, in 2021, in which Molnar was found to owe a couple more than $27,000 in unpaid rent.
Yet Molnar claims those incidents were not her fault, telling the outlet that her former friend had put her name on the lease without telling her. She further alleged that the same man, who is referred to by The Cut only as Giovanni, had stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars from her and her son, leaving them on the verge of homelessness, seven years before she met the Nordenströms.
Still, Molnar’s refusal to leave their home raised alarm bells for the couple, who consulted a lawyer and learned that, while their nanny was considered a licensee under state law—which meant she had been given permission to live rent-free in a dwelling by its owner, but was not an official tenant—they would need to follow a very careful process in order to legally evict her.
The couple served Molnar with a 10-day leave notice, which Jamie says she delivered in person when she saw the nanny and her son driving away from the property.
But, she says, the eviction date came and went, and Molnar still remained in their property.
The couple ultimately decided to file an official eviction petition with the local court, alleging in legal documents that Molnar was a “professional con-artist, with a well-documented history of ingratiating herself with well-off individuals, unlawfully occupying their property in bad faith, and then refusing to leave and abusing the protections afforded by eviction laws.”
What emerged in the wake of that date was a bitter battle between the two women—who both accuse the other of carrying out unacceptable behavior towards the other.
Jamie alleges that Molnar continued to flout the restrictions that they put in place around their property, inviting her adult children to visit her at the guesthouse, refusing to move her car out of the driveway, and violating local leash laws by allowing her Labrador to roam freely around the area.
Both women began filming one another, on their phones and via security cameras that were put up around the property, and local authorities were dragged into the mess by each party—responding to everything from trespass allegations to dog control complaints.
Jamie alleges that her life was made a misery during this time, claiming that she and her husband began actively avoiding areas of their home in which they knew they were visible to Molnar from the yard or from the guesthouse.
At one point, she says they even began sleeping at friends’ houses in a bid to get a break from what they say was a total nightmare.
She claims that her main concern was the safety of her daughter, telling The Cut that she began fearing Molnar would grow hostile in front of the child or, even worse, attempt to take her.
In August, a judge eventually ordered Molnar to vacate the Nordenströms’ property by Sept. 10—and not long after, the couple was granted an order of protection against their former employee after an altercation between the two women during which Jamie says the nanny began asking about her daughter’s whereabouts.
The protection order stated that Molnar “was to refrain from controlling, monitoring, or interfering with electronic devices on the property; she was to refrain from harassing, intimidating, or threatening her former employers; and she was to surrender any firearms,” according to the outlet.
On Aug. 31, Molnmar finally vacated their property—however Jamie says the nightmare was far from over, claiming that she went into the guesthouse to discover that the entire place had been soaked in urine, so much so that it had even leaked through the floorboards of the historic property.
The situation was so dire, Jamie claims, that she is being forced to hire an environmental cleaning company to go in and deal with the guesthouse, because her usual service said it could not handle the clean up.
When asked about the urine, Molnar told The Cut that she was horrified by the accusation, insisting that she knew nothing about it and telling the publication: “Maybe it was a bear.”
She denied that her dog had ever suffered from bladder issues, insisting that he had flown on several long-haul flights and had never had an accident.
Addressing Jamie’s other claims, Molnar says she has long been the victim of baseless accusations made by former landlords. She says she now fears that the order of protection put in place against her will prevent her from getting future work in childcare.
“I’m going to be completely discredited and slandered,” she told the publication. “Now I’m almost 60 years old. If you don’t let me work, how will I survive?”
Molnar, who is now working as a private chef, added that she has faced plenty of adversity in her life and has always prioritized providing for her children, and ensuring that they have a safe place to live.
Despite struggling with money issues in recent years, Molnar said that was not always the case, revealing that she was once a heavy-hitter on the New York social scene after helping her former husband and the father of three of her children, Pasquale Fabio, to launch his iconic Italian food chain Serafina Fabulous Pizza.
Following their divorce in 2001, however, she says that her life took a turn for the worse, accusing him of taking their children away from her and leaving her struggling for money.
She is currently suing the father of her youngest child, a French wine heir, for $5 million in child support—and has filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against Jamie. That case is still ongoing, however a judge slapped both women with protection orders during a hearing in September.