Kyle Bylin received an at-home DNA test kit during a Christmas gift exchange in 2024. It was random, inexpensive-looking family fun, the sort of present that usually produces a cousin nobody mentioned or a vague map of ancestral percentages. Instead, it triggered a switched at birth lawsuit involving two North Dakota families, a hospital delivery room, and 38 years of lives that cannot be neatly sorted back into place.
The DNA results connected Bylin to a woman on a genealogy platform who turned out to be his biological aunt. Her nephew, Jeremy Morrison, then took his own test. The findings showed that Morrison was biologically part of the Bylin family, while Bylin belonged to the Morrison family.
The two men and their families are now suing Unity Medical Center in North Dakota, alleging the hospital sent both newborns home with the wrong parents in 1988.
What the lawsuit says happened at Unity Medical Center
According to the lawsuit, Kyle Bylin and Jeremy Morrison were the only babies born on January 26, 1988, at Unity Medical Center. The families allege that each infant was discharged to the wrong parents.
The claim is painfully simple, even if the consequences are not: two newborns, one hospital, and two families who spent nearly four decades building lives around an error they did not know existed.
Bylin reportedly still has the hospital identification bracelet that incorrectly identified him as “Kyle Bylin.” The families say that detail suggests the mix-up happened before the babies ever left the hospital.
There were signs over the years, though not enough to reveal the truth. Bylin’s family had light hair, while Kyle’s hair was dark. Plenty of families explain away differences like that. Genetics is not exactly known for handing out clear memos.
How DNA testing revealed the family mix-up
The discovery began with the kind of consumer DNA kit now common in family trees, holiday gifts, and occasionally, life-altering legal complaints.
After Bylin submitted his sample, the genealogy platform matched him with a woman who shared enough DNA to be identified as his biological aunt. That led to Morrison taking a test of his own.
The second test clarified what the first had suggested: Bylin and Morrison had grown up in each other’s biological families.
Both men have since met their biological parents. Those meetings were described as “awkward” but “welcoming,” a combination that sounds about right when four decades of family history arrive at the door without calling first.
Morrison said the truth has not produced an instant emotional reset.
“I know the truth now, but we’re still working to build relationships,” Morrison said. “I mean, it’s not like I can go back in time and rebuild what’s already lost. It’s a work in progress, just like me.”
The hospital says it is still trying to determine what happened
Unity Medical Center has said it has no records showing staff were responsible for the alleged switch. The hospital has also said the delivery staff from that time are no longer employed there.
Still, the hospital has said it is working to understand what happened.
That leaves the families in a difficult middle ground: DNA evidence has answered the biological question, but the institutional question remains disputed. The lawsuit argues that the hospital’s mistake altered the course of two families’ lives. The hospital, for now, says it does not have records proving its staff caused the error.
For Bylin and Morrison, the legal case is only part of the fallout. Both men have made clear that the people who raised them remain their parents. That has also been echoed by the parents themselves.
Evelyn Newton, who raised Kyle as her son, told The Associated Press that her love for him has not changed.
“Kyle is still my son. That is never going to change,” Newton said. “But I feel robbed of the life I should have had with my biological son. You can’t go back and replace 35 years.”
Two families now face a truth with no easy fix
The lawsuit frames the alleged hospital mix-up as a loss that cannot be repaired by a DNA report or a courtroom judgment alone.
The families say they were deprived of the lives they should have had with their biological relatives. At the same time, they are not rejecting the bonds that formed over 38 years. That is the hard part of this case: the truth does not replace the past, and it does not make the love inside these families any less real.
Bylin and Morrison now know where they came from biologically. What they do with that knowledge, and how the hospital responds in court, is the next chapter in a story that began in a maternity ward in 1988 and surfaced only because a Christmas gift turned out to be anything but ordinary.
