A bewildered couple from Florida has taken legal action against a fertility clinic after discovering that their baby is biologically unrelated to them.
Thrilled with the news of their upcoming child, Tiffany Score and Steven Mills were initially elated.
The couple had sought assistance from IVF Life approximately five years ago to achieve pregnancy through in vitro fertilization (IVF).
This procedure involves fertilizing a woman’s egg with a man’s sperm outside the woman’s body in a laboratory setting.
After fertilization, the embryos are frozen until the parents choose to have them implanted. For Score and Mills, this took place in April.
They joyously welcomed their daughter nine months later, but soon began to suspect that an error had occurred at IVF Life, a clinic operating under the name Fertility Center of Orlando in Longwood.
Both Score and Mills are white, but the baby had the ‘appearance of a racially non-Caucasian child,’ according to the lawsuit against the clinic, per News6.
Determined to discover the truth, the pair sought out genetic testing. This confirmed that the baby is not biologically theirs.
Tiffany Score and Steven Mills with the baby whom they say is not biologically theirs
The alleged malpractice occurred at the Fertility Center of Orlando in Longwood, Florida
They filed the lawsuit on January 22 after allegedly trying to contact the clinic multiple times without getting a response.
‘They have fallen in love with this child,’ one of the couple’s lawyers, Jack Scarola, told the Orlando Sentinel.
‘They would be thrilled in the knowledge that they could raise this child. But their concern is that this is someone else’s child, and someone could show up at any time and claim the baby and take that baby away from them.’
Score and Mills are also afraid that one of the three fertilized eggs they had frozen at the clinic may have been mistakenly implanted into someone else.
They have demanded that the clinic share what happened with all the other patients who had embryos stored at the facility during the year before Score gave birth.
Additionally, they want IVF Life to pay for the genetic testing of every child born as a result of its services over the last five years.
Among their requests is that the clinic account for their remaining embryos, according to the lawsuit.
The baffled parents emphasized that they ‘love our little girl’ in a statement to News6.
Dr Milton McNichol leads the clinic where Score and Mills sought out IVF treatment
‘We would hope to be able to continue to raise her ourselves with confidence that she won’t be taken away from us,’ they continued.
‘At the same time, we are aware that we have a moral obligation to find and notify her biological parents, as it is in her best interest that her genetic parents are provided the option to raise her as their own.’
A family spokesman said that an investigation into the situation is ongoing.
‘Based upon leads discovered to date, and despite the lack of help or cooperation from the clinic, there is hope that we will be able to introduce our daughter to her genetic parents and to find our own genetic child soon,’ they said.
The filing names IVF Life LLC and Dr Milton McNichol, who runs the clinic, the Orlando Sentinel reported.
The Fertility Center of Orlando had shared a statement on its website, apparently referring to Score and Mills’s alarming circumstances.
It reportedly stated that 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.’
But the notice was removed after a hearing for the case on Wednesday.
During the court session, the judge ordered the clinic to submit a thorough plan for handling this situation by Friday.
A June 2023 inspection reportedly found several safetly violations at the facility
McNichol was reprimanded by Florida’s Board of Medicine in May 2024 after an inspection of the clinic in June 2023 revealed several issues.
These reportedly included equipment that ‘did not meet current performance standards,’ not complying with a risk-management agenda and missing medication.
He was fined $5,000 as a result of the offenses, the Orlando Sentinel reported.
The Daily Mail has reached out to IVF Life and Scarola for comment.
