A Nebraska man is fighting to get a Social Security number and valid birth certificate for his toddler, Caroline — whose name is incorrectly listed in state records as “Unakite Thirteen Hotel," NBC News reported.
Jason Kilburn, who lives outside of Omaha, has been desperately trying to obtain a Social Security card and a useable birth certificate for Caroline. Without these documents, he said, he has been unable to get any services for her, from health insurance to child care, because they all require a Social Security number to verify her identity.
“It’s like she’s a ghost,” Kilburn said in a phone interview Monday. “It’s been very, very taxing.”
Caroline was born in November 2022 in a house just over the state border in Council Bluffs, Iowa, to a mother who immediately handed her over to a Nebraska foster family, Kilburn said. He and Caroline’s mother had dated on and off for several years but were not together when she gave birth, he said, and it was only later that he learned of Caroline’s arrival.
Once Kilburn took a DNA test proving he was the girl’s father, the juvenile court relinquished custody from the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees foster care, to him. The mother, who faces allegations of neglect and drug problems, has no custody rights, an attorney for Kilburn said. Attempts to reach Caroline’s birth mother on Monday were unsuccessful.
As Kilburn tried to gather basic paperwork for his daughter once she was in his custody, he quickly realized that something was wrong: In the exchange between Caroline’s birth mother in Iowa and the foster family in Nebraska, instead of a birth certificate, the girl had received only a certificate of live birth — an unofficial document that hospitals submit to start the process of generating government-issued birth certificates.
Further complicating the matter, the certificate of live birth listed a bizarre name on it: Unakite Thirteen Hotel.
Kilburn said he contacted CHI Health Mercy Council Bluffs, the hospital that issued the document, and received little guidance on how to proceed. But he did get a potential explanation for where the name on the document came from.
“I was told it was a computer-generated name,” he said.
Kilburn then learned that his daughter did not have a Social Security number. He is now working with Joshua Livingston, an attorney at the Koenig | Dunne law firm in Omaha, to try to push the state of Nebraska to resolve the matter. Livingston called the quagmire “a circuitous, bureaucratic loop.”
Neither CHI Health Mercy Council Bluffs nor the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services immediately replied to a request for comment Monday. The Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services said information about children in state custody is confidential.
“DHHS is working with the child’s father’s attorney to resolve this issue. The Department cannot go into any further detail,” a spokesperson said in an email.
“Each state is responsible for all vital events that happen within the state including births and deaths as well as the registration of the event, the certificate, and any amendments or corrections needed,” the statement added.
In an email to NBC News on Monday afternoon, the Social Security Administration indicated it was looking into the case.
“Privacy laws preclude Social Security from discussing the specifics of an individual’s case. However, we can share that the agency is reaching out to Mr. Kilburn directly,” a spokesperson said.
But as of Monday evening, Kilburn had not yet been contacted by the Social Security Administration.
There have been attempts to help Caroline get what she needs. In March 2023, the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services filed a motion in juvenile court in Douglas County, Nebraska, seeking a court order “allowing NDHHS to establish a legal name for the above-named minor child as Unakite Thirteen Hotel” so it could temporarily use her incorrect name to get an official birth certificate that it planned to use to get her a Social Security number.
The court granted the motion, and Livingston said the Nebraska DHHS received a birth certificate listing Unakite Hotel as the child’s name that said “for government use only.” But the agency never followed through with getting her a Social Security number, he said. Livingston filed a motion in December 2024 seeking to reopen the matter, which the court denied.
He said the Nebraska DHHS recently contacted him to say they were in touch with a counterpart in Iowa to work on the issue, but he has not received any updates. He is planning to file a motion in the coming days to ask the court if the birth certificate that said “for government use only” can be amended so it has Kilburn’s name on it, which should enable him to use the birth certificate to apply for a Social Security number himself.
In the meantime, the legal limbo has put Kilburn and Caroline in a precarious position.
He’s currently not working due to a heart problem and was denied Medicaid and other services for Caroline because he could not provide a Social Security number for her. A simple check-up for Caroline at the pediatrician’s office recently cost Kilburn about $700, he said, making him hesitant about going to other doctor’s visits.
“Three or four weeks ago, she was sick. She had a fever and she was throwing up, and I had to weigh my options about what I was going to do,” he said. “It really sucks to sit here and watch her suffer when there’s health care out there that I can’t get because of this.”
He also is unable to enroll Caroline in day care, speech therapy, or other early intervention services that he feels she may qualify for.
“It’s not like I’m trying to pull something here,” he said. “This is stuff she’s entitled to as any American is.”
Nonetheless, he said that Caroline — whose full name, once he can get an actual birth certificate, will be Caroline Elizabeth Kilburn — is doing well overall.
“She’s a joy to be around,” he said. “She doesn’t show signs of any trauma from any of this.”
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