A man from Nebraska is fighting to obtain a social security number and a valid birth certificate for his child, Caroline, whose name is incorrectly in state records such as “thirteen Hotel Unkite”.
Jason Kilburn, who lives outside Omaha, has been desperately trying to obtain a social security card and a usable birth certificate for Caroline. Without these documents, he said, he has not been able to obtain any service for her, from health insurance to child care, because they all require a social security number to verify their identity.
“It’s as if it were a ghost,” Kilburn said in a telephone interview on Monday. “It has been very, very demanding.”
Caroline was born in November 2022 in a house just above the state border in Council Bluffs, Iowa, from a mother who immediately delivered her to a foster family in Nebraska, Kilburn said. He and Caroline’s mother had occasionally left for several years, but they were not together when she gave birth, she said, and it was only later that she learned about Caroline’s arrival.
Once Kilburn performed a DNA test, demonstrating that he was the girl’s father, the Court of Minors resigned from the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services of Nebraska, which supervises parenting care, to him. The mother, who faces accusations of negligence and drug problems, has no custody rights, a Kilburn lawyer said. The attempts to get to Caroline’s biological mother on Monday were not successful.
When Kilburn tried to gather basic paperwork for her daughter once she was in her custody, she quickly realized that something was wrong: in the exchange between Caroline’s biological mother in Iowa and the host family in Nebraska, instead of A birth certificate, the girl had received only a living birth certificate, an unofficial document that hospitals submit to begin the process of generating birth certificates issued For the government.
To further complicate the matter, the living birth certificate listed a strange name: a Sinkite 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 obtain a possible explanation of where the name of the document comes.
“They told me it was a computer generated name,” he said.
Kilburn knew that his daughter did not have a social security number. Now he is working with Joshua Livingston, a lawyer at the Koenig | Dunne Firen of lawyers in Omaha, to try to boost the state of Nebraska to resolve the matter. Livingston called the Quagmire “a tortuous bureaucratic circuit.”
Neither Chi Health Mercy Council Bluffs nor the Department of Health and Human Services of IowA responded immediately to a comment request on Monday. The Department of Health and Human Services of Nebraska said that information about children in state custody is confidential.
“Dhhs is working with the child’s father’s lawyer to solve this problem. The department cannot go into more detail, ”said a spokesman in an email.
“Each State is responsible for all vital events that occur within the State, including births and deaths, as well as the registration of the event, the certificate and any necessary amendment or correction,” the statement added.
In an email to NBC News on Monday afternoon, the Social Security Administration indicated that it was investigating the case.
“Privacy laws prevent Social Security from discussing the details of the case of an individual. However, we can share that the agency is communicating directly with Mr. Kilburn, ”said a spokesman.
But from Monday night, the Social Security Administration had not yet been contacted by Kilburn.
There have been attempts to help Caroline get what he needs. In March 2023, the Department of Health and Human Services of Nebraska presented a motion in the Court of Minors in Douglas County, Nebraska, seeking a court order “allowing NDHHS to establish a legal name for the minor child mentioned above as a Hotel UNEKITE thirteen “, so it could temporarily use its incorrect name to obtain an official birth certificate that you planned to use to obtain a social security number.
The court granted the motion, and Livingston said that the DHHS of Nebraska received a birth certificate that certified a UNKITE hotel as the name of the child who said “only for use in the government.” But the agency never continued to get a social security number, he said. Livingston presented a motion in December 2024 seeking to reopen the matter, which the court denied.
He said that Nebraska’s DHHS recently contacted him to tell him that they were in contact with a counterpart in Iowa to work on the subject, but has not received any update. He is planning to present a motion in the next few days to ask the court if the birth certificate that says “only for the use of the government” can be modified so that it has the name of Kilburn, which should allow you to use the birth certificate to request a Social Security number himself.
Meanwhile, legal limbo has put Kilburn and Caroline in a precarious position.
He is currently not working due to a heart problem and Medicaid and other services for Caroline were denied because he could not provide a social security number. A simple check for Caroline in the pediatrician’s office recently cost Kilburn around $ 700, he said, making him doubt the visits of other doctors.
“Three or four weeks ago, I was sick. I had a fever and I was vomiting, and I had to weigh my options about what I was going to do, ”he said. “It really stinks here and seeing her suffer when there is medical attention that I can’t get for this.”
Nor can Caroline enroll in the nursery, speech therapy or other early intervention services for those who feel that she can qualify.
“It’s not as if I were trying to get something here,” he said. “This is what is entitled like any American.”
However, he said that Caroline, whose full name, once you can obtain a real birth certificate, will be Caroline Elizabeth Kilburn, is working well in general.
“It’s a joy to be close,” he said. “She shows no signs of any trauma of any of this.”
