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A Long Island cook says a well-to- do Upper East Side couple swiped her baby from a baby-sitter and is suing to get her daughter back.
The couple, Andrew and Kelley Grant, had been in the process of adopting baby Esperanza from Vilma Ramirez, and the process had entered a 45-day window that allowed Vilma to change her mind, when on Jan. 9, Andrew swooped in “while I was at work and convinced the Mirarchis, who were taking care of Esperanza, that he needed to take the child now,” Ramirez alleges in a Manhattan Supreme Court suit seeking the child’s return.
“If I had been advised . . . that the Grants could decide that I would never see Esperanza again, I would never have signed any consent or other documents,” Ramirez alleges in a lawsuit filed March 7.
“I really did not understand the legal language, and no one explained them to me at the time,” says Ramirez.
Ramirez, a 35-year-old cook from El Salvador with little command of English who lives in Brentwood, LI, was pregnant with Esperanza, her fourth child, when a trusted friend, Blanca Mirarchi, convinced her adoption was her best option. At the same time, the Grants badly wanted a child.
The 45-year-old software designer and his ad-exec wife, 37, had a solid marriage, enjoyed living in their $950,000 East 83rd Street co-op, and could afford the $30,000 or more in costs that a domestic adoption can incur.
Ramirez gave birth to Esperanza, on Feb. 15, 2010. Mirarchi, 56, found the Grants, and introduced Ramirez to Long Island adoption lawyer Steven Sarisohn.
Negotiations between lawyers for the two families began, while the Grants fixed up a room for Esperanza.
On Dec. 23, Ramirez signed away her guardianship of Esperanza — though she says she thought she was agreeing to an open adoption, allowing her continued contact with the child.
Esperanza’s adoption was “extrajudicial” — a legal deal in which the biological parent signs over consent without a judge present, but has 45 days to change the decision. If the parent opts to revoke consent, a judge decides what’s best for the child.
An attorney for the Grants — who have begun calling Esperanza by the name Isabella — called Ramirez’s allegations “off the wall.”
“The birth mother placed the child in the care of others from the beginning of her life,” lawyer Bonnie Rabin told The Post.
But a source with knowledge of the case said those claims are “patently false.”
Sarisohn also denied any wrongdoing.
“I know I did everything properly,” he told The Post.
Ramirez’s new lawyers say differently.
“His actions were more those of a lawyer attempting to facilitate the adoption rather than provide counsel to the birth mother about her rights,” they said in court papers.
A Supreme Court’s judge last week bounced the fight to Manhattan Surrogate Court.