Florida couple sues fertility clinic, says woman birthed someone else’s baby – National
Tiffany Score and Steven Mills filed a lawsuit in Orange County Circuit Court on Jan. 22 against IVF Life, Inc., located in the Orlando area, and the lead reproductive endocrinologist, Dr. Milton McNichol.
The couple hired IVF Life around five years ago to help them start a family using in vitro fertilization (IVF), a process in which a woman’s eggs are fertilized with sperm outside of her body. The embryos are then frozen until the couple decides to have them implanted into the woman’s uterus.
According to the lawsuit, an embryo was implanted into Score in March 2025 and she gave birth to a “beautiful, healthy female child” in December, but when their daughter appeared to be “racially non-Caucasian,” they ordered genetic testing to see if the baby was theirs.
“The disparity prompted Plaintiffs to employ genetic testing of the parentage of the child to whom they had given birth. That testing confirmed that Baby Doe has no genetic relationship to either of the Plaintiffs,” according to the legal filing.
The lawsuit further alleges that the embryo implanted in Score was “not one of the embryos produced by the Plaintiffs.”
“Of equal concern to the Plaintiffs is the obvious possibility that someone else was implanted with one or more of their embryos and is pregnant with or has been pregnant with and is presently parenting one or more of their children,” the lawsuit says.
One of Score and Mills’ lawyers, John Scarola, sent the clinic a letter on Jan. 5 to inform it of the situation and to co-operate in determining the disposition of their embryos.
“In recognition of the obvious urgency in achieving the requested objectives, a deadline of the close of business on January 7, 2026, was imposed for obtaining a response from the Defendants. As of the filing of this action, no substantive response has been received, although there was an acknowledgement after the imposed deadline,” the filing reads.
The legal documents state that there is “no adequate remedy at law for the ongoing loss, injury and damage inflicted on the Plaintiffs as a direct consequence of the afore-escribed acts and omissions on the part of the Defendants.”
Score and Mills have created “an intensely strong emotional bond” with the unborn child Score “carried during the nine months of her pregnancy, and despite the certain knowledge that Baby Doe is not their genetically matched child, the emotional bond grows stronger every minute of every day that Baby Doe remains in their care,” the lawsuit claims.
The couple said they would “willingly keep her in their care,” however, they do recognize that the baby “should legally and morally be united with her genetic parents so long as they are fit, able and willing to take her.”
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Score and Mills are requesting “to be fully informed of the disposition of their own embryos and to be relieved of the ever-increasing mental anguish of not knowing whether a child or children belonging to them are in someone else’s care.”
They are also asking for the defendants to pay the expense of free genetic testing for all patients and children of all patients whose birth resulted from embryo implantation at the clinic during the past five years, when they had custody of their three embryos.
The lawsuit seeks the defendants to provide an audited accounting of the disposition of all three stored embryos and asking for further relief as the court may deem appropriate under the circumstances, “as well as reserving jurisdiction to award damages to the couple upon satisfying the applicable prerequisites for the award of such relief,” according to the suit.
In a since-deleted statement on the IVF clinic’s website, it claimed it was “actively cooperating with an investigation to support one of our patients in determining the source of an error that resulted in the birth of a child who is not genetically related to them,” according to the Orlando Sentinel.
At an emergency hearing on Jan. 28, lawyers for the couple and the clinic said they were working on an agreement to resolve the couple’s demands and the clinic had also preliminarily agreed to do the genetic testing, the Sentinel reports.
Francis Pierce III, a lawyer for the clinic, told the Sentinel there are privacy issues with genetically testing other babies that were born to patients at the clinic and that the patients “would have to agree to be tested.”
Score made a social media post asking for the public to “please bear with us as we navigate this deeply confusing and painful time, living with the heartbreak of not knowing what happened to our genetic embryos or whether we may have a biological child (or children) somewhere out there in the hands of strangers.”
“As many of you know, our daughter, Shea, was born just over a month ago via emergency C-section. What some of you may not know is that her birth was the result of the miracle of in vitro fertilization—a journey that took years of careful medical procedures, tremendous expense, and deep emotional and physical sacrifice. The result is a beautiful, healthy baby girl whom we love more than words can express,” Score wrote in her post.
Score said she has “a million things” she wants to say but she is only able to share that “due to a medical error – the wrong embryo implanted by the doctor – Shea is not genetically related to either Steve or me.”
“While we are profoundly grateful to have Shea in our lives and love her immeasurably, we also recognize that we have a moral obligation to find her genetic parents,” Score continued. “Our joy over her birth is further complicated by the devastating reality that her genetic parents- whom we do not yet know—or possibly another family entirely, may have received our genetic embryo. We are heartbroken, devastated, and confused.”
Score said she hopes that sharing this news “will allow us to begin living more freely and to finally celebrate the one beautiful thing that has come from all of this: our daughter.”
“Shea is completely innocent and so undeserving of any of this. We’re also sharing this to prevent harmful rumors or misinformation, as we’ve already seen inaccurate information circulating in a few stories and articles,” she wrote.
Score said the “added fear that Shea could be taken from us at any time is almost unbearable.”
“There are so many details and potential outcomes to this story, but for now, we will leave it here until further progress has been made by our legal counsel. Until then, please keep Shea and our family in your hearts and prayers, and if you have any information on the family who might be at the other side of this, please contact us,” the post concluded.
Score’s sister, Alexa, has created a GoFundMe page to help cover “extensive medical expenses, including prior IVF costs, hospital bills, and mental health therapies.”
The GoFundMe post had raised more than US$10,000 of its $12,000 goal from more than 70 donations as of Monday afternoon.
“Despite the chaos and confusion, Tiff and Steve have flourished in providing the most-loving, compassionate, and thoughtful care for their sweet baby – a selfless love that only a mother and a father can know,” Alexa wrote. “Shea is happy and healthy and utterly loved by so many – parents, grandparents, cousins, uncles, and aunts. With that said, the entire family lives with the constant fear that Shea could be taken from us at any moment.”
The funds raised will also “support efforts to locate Shea’s biological family and to find Tiff and Steve’s genetic embryos, which may or may not still exist,” as well as “to retrieve eggs that were frozen during an IVF cycle completed at a different clinic seven years ago—an option they never anticipated needing,” according to Alexa.
“The process of retrieving, thawing, fertilizing, and implanting these eggs and embryos can cost tens of thousands of dollars, on top of the ten’s of thousands already spent on IVF treatments,” she added.
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