Why was the father the informant on this birth certificate?
Perhaps that was common back then.
The divorce. Found this digging around and it makes some sense.
“Ann filed for Divorce Jan. 20, 1964 (Inauguration Day – what are the odds?), and the date was set by the presiding judge for the trial to commence 30 days after Obama SR would have responded to his notification, sent to Cambridge, Mass (Cambridge – what are the odds? ).
Judge Samuel P. King who granted the divorce – last I heard was retired and alive (for now) in his 90s in Hawaii — MAY or MAY NOT have asked to see the Marriage Certificate. BUT, I bet Judge King asked to see Obama JR’s Birth Certificate to confirm Ann’s claims that Obama SR was in fact the father. That is “standard” policy to have a Birth Certificate in case the mother asks for child support from the father (or Welfare) later after the divorce. Judge King probably told Ann to produce a birth certificate before or at trial, which would have been sometime in mid- to late-February 1964 HAD Obama SR answered his notice that was sent to Cambridge.
When Judge King wrote the order on Jan. 23, he had his clerk notify Obama SR via what’s referred to as a “knock and nail”. That is, the postman leaves the notification on the door for (generally) 10 days and retrieves it after that time passes — signed or unsigned. That order was sent on Jan. 23 via airmail from Hawaii and was probably posted on Obama SR’s door Jan. 27-28.
Obama SR’s notification was unsigned by him and apparently IGNORED — either he didn’t want to accept it OR he was NOT at that location.
However, Judge King granted the divorce to Ann Obama (which changed back to Ann Dunham) exactly 60 days from when the original order was request by Ann by default.
NOW, my guess is that Judge King asked to see Obama JR’s Birth Certificate before he’d be willing to grant the divorce, either at trial or by default on March 20, 1964. Ann probably didn’t have the birth certificate when she filed on Jan 20. That’s when this birth certificate would have been generated — before trial for the 1964 divorce.
Important side note: the Certificate issue date of Feb 17, 1964, is JUST A FEW SHORT MONTHS AFTER KENYA BECAME INDEPENDENT on Dec. 12, 1963. TO THIS DATE, this may be the only certificate on Kenyan file today if British documents were sent to the UK for archiving leading up Kenya becoming an independent nation.
If you note the date on the Certified Copy, it was created by the Registrar in Kenya on Feb. 17, 1964. The Kenyan Birth Certificate would have been issued in the midst of the divorce — AFTER the divorce was filed by Ann in Hawaii on Jan. 20, but BEFORE the divorce was granted by Judge King on March 20.
Furthermore, it’s quite plausible that once Ann actually had this Kenyan birth certificate in her hands, and the divorce was granted on March 20, her attorney, George Kerr, counseled her on Hawaiian birth certificate “loopholes” and told her how to file for a Hawaiian “Certificate of Delayed Birth” to get Welfare or OTHER support for young Obama as a child of a non-supporting foreign national.
As Hawaiian law allows, that CODB could have been “upgraded” later to a “Certificate of Live Birth” in the 60s or 70s, which would then be a “root document” of the shorter “Certification of Live Birth” we see today presented as proof of birth from Barack Hussein Obama II.
I can’t vouch for the veracity of the Kenyan birth certificate itself, not knowing how or from whom Orly obtained the birth certificate (the chain of evidence). It may have been obtained quite surreptitiously from the only filed Kenyan birth certificate record copy requested — likely generated from the 1964 divorce.
It’s QUITE possible that all other copies of this Kenyan birth certificate may have been scrubbed from Kenyan archives, but this one may have survived in a lone Vital Statistics office somewhere in Kenya not known about until now.
HOWEVER — the dates DO “line up” for the Kenyan Birth Certificate to be REAL.”
(posted by Jacqlyn Smith at Citizen Wells blog)