Tiffany Score and Steven Mills with their baby during a court hearing Wednesday (Orange County Circuit Court via the Orlando Sentinel).
A Florida couple is alleging in a lawsuit that a fertility clinic may have mixed up embryos which led to the birth of a baby girl that was not biologically theirs.
The couple last week filed the lawsuit in Orange County Circuit Court against IVF Life, Inc., which is located in the Orlando area, and its lead reproductive endocrinologist Dr. Milton McNichol. While the lawsuit names the couple as John and Jane Doe and the child Baby Doe, the Orlando Sentinel identified them as Tiffany Score and Steven Mills.
In vitro fertilization is when a woman's eggs are fertilized with a man's sperm and are stored until the couple is ready for pregnancy. According to the lawsuit, the couple placed three viable embryos in cryogenic storage in 2020. The clinic implanted one of those embryos in Score's uterus in April 2025, and according to the complaint, she gave birth to a "beautiful, healthy female child." But the couple noticed something was amiss right away.
"Tragically, while both Jane Doe and John Doe are racially Caucasian, Baby Doe displayed the physical appearance of a racially non-Caucasian child," the lawsuit said.
Testing confirmed that the baby had no genetic relationship to either parent, which proved the embryo implanted in Score was not the one she and her husband produced.
"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," plaintiff lawyers wrote.
One of the couple's lawyers, John Scarola, sent the clinic a letter on Jan. 5 about the situation and demanded they cooperate in "uniting Baby Doe with her genetic parents" and determine what happened to his clients' embryos.
The new parents had an "intensely strong emotional bond" with their unborn child during pregnancy and even though they are raising a child who is not biologically related to them, they would willingly keep the girl. But Score and Mills recognize the girl "should legally and morally be united with her genetic parents so long as they are fit, able and willing to take her," the lawsuit stated.
Both the plaintiffs and the defendants held an emergency court hearing on Wednesday, per the Sentinel. Mara Hatfield, another plaintiff attorney, reportedly told a judge the mix-up could have occurred when the couple submitted the embryo in 2020 or when Score was injected in 2025. They want the clinic to pay for genetic testing for patients going back five years.
However, the attorney for the clinic, Francis Pierce III, raised privacy concerns for the clinic's other patients.
"Patients would have to agree to be tested," he reportedly said.
Judge Margaret Schreiber ordered the clinic to submit detailed plans on how it is addressing the situation by Friday. According to the Sentinel, the clinic had a notice on its website that said it is "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." The notice has since been taken down.
During the hearing, Scarola said while the situation is unusual, the clinic made a "horrendous error."
Neither McNichol nor Scarola immediately returned a message for comment.
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