A Nebraska man is struggling to get a birth certificate and Social Security number for his toddler daughter after a bureaucratic mishap left her with the nonsensical name "Unakite Thirteen Hotel" in medical records.
The girl's mother—who had struggled with drug problems, according to an NBC News story about the case—had relinquished her to the state immediately after she was born at a house in Iowa in November 2022. When the girl was handed over to foster parents, she was issued a "certificate of live birth," a provisional document that hospitals use to start the process of issuing a birth certificate. Bizarrely, the girl was given a computer-generated placeholder name: "Unakite Thirteen Hotel."
When 49-year-old Jason Kilburn—who says he had dated the girl's mother periodically over several years—learned about the baby, he took a DNA test that proved he was her biological father. When he gained custody of the girl, whom he named "Caroline Elizabeth," he learned that she didn't have a birth certificate or a Social Security number. When he called the hospital that issued Caroline's certificate of live birth, he says he received little guidance on how to get government documents for his daughter.
