Nebraska child’s name incorrectly listed as 'Unakite Thirteen Hotel'

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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.”

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.

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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.

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