Nebraska toddler named ‘Unakite Thirteen Hotel’ finally gets social security number after father’s pleas

Jason Kilburn now hopes to get his daughter, whose real name is Caroline, a proper birth certificate. The toddler, whose real name is Caroline Elizabeth Kilburn, has never had a birth certificate in that name and was never assigned a social security number, which made it difficult for her father to get her on Medicaid and qualify for other benefits like day care, even as she was recently sick with a fever.

The child was born in a house in Council Bluffs, Iowa on the Nebraska border in November 2022. Her mother, who briefly dated Kilburn, gave her up, and the child was placed with a foster family in Nebraska. After Kilburn was determined to be the father, the state gave him custody.

CHI Health Mercy Council Bluffs, an Iowa hospital, issued a certificate of live birth, a document used by hospitals to start the process of generating government-issued birth certificates, using a computer-generated name. It’s not clear if the hospital or an agency made the error.

This week, Kilburn was invited to the Social Security Administration’s Omaha office, where officials finally provided him with a social security number for the child. The number was not issued under her real name, but her dad told NBC News it was a step in the right direction.

A physical card should arrive in the coming weeks. “Getting it under ‘Unakite’ is obviously not the most desirable way to go about it, but having that number under any name at this point is such a victory,” the father’s attorney, Joshua Livingston, told NBC News. “There’s mechanisms in place to change names.”.

Next, Kilburn will work on getting Caroline a birth certificate. In an email to the outlet, the father said: “I am just so relieved that we finally have this part of the puzzle in place...I am absolutely overwhelmed by the outpouring of support for myself and Caroline and grateful for the support of each governmental agency that reached out to assist in finally resolving this part of the problem.”.

Kilburn had to take the state to court to try and get the matter resolved but ultimately was not successful. In March 2023, a judge granted a motion allowing the state Department of Health and Human Services to temporarily use the child’s incorrect name to get a birth certificate and social security number.

The department obtained a birth certificate stating “for government use only,” which had Unakite Hotel as the child’s name. However, officials never provided Kilburn with a social security number until this week. Kilburn’s attorney filed a motion in December 2024 trying to reopen the case but was denied by the court.