Florida couple learns baby born through IVF is not biologically theirs

The birth of Shea should have been the end of an IVF journey. Instead, it became a warning about how fragile embryo oversight can be when a clinic’s records, transfer procedures and accountability fail at the same time.

Tiffany Score and Steven Mills sued the Fertility Center of Orlando after genetic testing showed that the baby girl born to them on Dec. 11, 2025, was not biologically related to either parent. Court filings said Score and Mills are both white and that the child appeared to be racially non-Caucasian, an immediate sign that something had gone badly wrong in the treatment process at the Longwood, Florida, clinic.

In February, the couple asked a court to force the clinic to identify the baby’s biological parents and explain what happened to their own embryos, saying they feared one or more of them may have been transferred to another patient. The case has highlighted a central weakness in U.S. fertility care: when an embryo is misidentified or misplaced, the error can remain hidden until after a child is born and testing exposes the mismatch.

On April 22, 2026, the couple said testing had identified the baby’s genetic parents. Their attorney, Jack Scarola, said the identities would remain confidential to protect their privacy. Score and Mills said the development ended one chapter of their ordeal, but they still do not know what happened to their embryos. In court documents and hearings, the clinic’s defendants did not dispute that Shea should be, but is not, the genetic child of Score and Mills, and attorneys said they were cooperating with requests for DNA testing of other couples.

The Fertility Center of Orlando announced in early April that it was shutting down after “thoughtful consideration.” NBC News reported the clinic had also been dealing with legal and financial problems. The closure leaves another layer of uncertainty around a case that is already about more than one family.

It has become part of a wider national debate over how IVF is regulated. NBC News reported in March 2025 that more than 300 lawsuits filed from 2019 to 2024 alleged embryos, eggs or sperm were lost, destroyed or swapped across 19 states. Legal experts say the United States has relatively weak IVF oversight compared with other developed countries, leaving patients to rely heavily on clinic procedures, documentation and court action when those systems break down.