The biological parents of a baby girl at the center of a startling IVF mix-up say they are devastated after being compelled to surrender the child.
Through their attorney, the unidentified couple said they were placed in what they described as an “absolutely impossible situation” after discovering that their embryo had been implanted in another woman.
Authorities believe the error dates back to March 2020, when the couple was undergoing treatment at the Fertility Center of Orlando at the same time as Florida residents Tiffany Score and Steven Mills.
After doctors mistakenly transferred the wrong embryo to Score, she later gave birth in December to a baby girl named Shea. It did not take long for Score and Mills to realize that the child was not their biological daughter.
Score and Mills have said they located Shea’s biological parents out of what they called a “moral obligation.” At the same time, they made clear they had grown deeply attached to the baby and hoped to keep her.
While attorneys for Score and Mills said an agreement was reached earlier this week that would allow them to retain custody of Shea, the biological parents’ lawyer told NBC News that the couple had been left heartbroken by the painful turn of events.
‘They are heartbroken over what has happened… They had to make the heartbreaking decision to not fight for custody,’ their attorney Rob Marcereau said.
He added: ‘They also understand that the birth couple are also suffering.’
Tiffany Score and Steven Mills welcomed their baby girl Shea in December, only to realize she was the result of a bizarre IVF mix-up that led to a complex legal case to keep her
Score gave birth to the girl in December, and said even though it was instantly apparent that a mistake had been made, she and Mills loved their baby girl Shea and wanted to keep her
The bizarre situation captured headlines in December when Mills and Score, who are white, welcomed the baby girl, who is non-Caucasian.
They described the search for Shea’s biological parents as a ‘heartbreaking journey’, but said they loved the baby girl as their own and formed an ‘intensely strong emotional bond’ with her.
In a court hearing this week in Seminole County, Florida, a judge approved a ‘mutually devised custody agreement’ between the parties, which will allow Score and Mills to keep custody of the baby girl.
But Marcereau said the agreement was reached primarily due to the complexity of the case, saying that ‘if it was up to my clients and if they had the choice, of course’ they would want to keep Shea.
The attorney said while they would have preferred custody, the legal hurdles in the case would have been too great to overcome and they did not wish to put Score and Mills through a lengthy court challenge.
‘The laws in this country, and in Florida, favor the parents who actually give birth to a child, so it would have been an incredibly uphill legal battle,’ he said.
In response to a request for comment on the situation from the Daily Mail, Score and Mills’ attorney Mara Hatfield said: ‘Tiffany and Steve recognize the public interest in the details of their IVF experience, and they appreciate the role the news media has played in bringing them and Shea to the point where Shea’s genetic parents were able to be identified and fears about Shea’s future have been settled.
‘However, Tiffany and Steve are committed to respect the privacy concerns of Shea’s genetic parents with whom they have begun and intend to continue to foster a relationship of friendship and trust.
‘They are also committed to protecting Shea from harmful intrusion on her privacy. For these reasons neither Tiffany and Steve nor their attorneys will be making any further public comments at this time.’
The couple welcomed Shea into their lives in December 2025, after having received treatment at the Fertility Clinic of Orlando (pictured)
After genetic testing identified Shea’s biological parents, Score (pictured with her daughter) and Mills issued a statement vowing that they ‘will love and will be this child’s parents forever’
With custody of Shea settled in court, Score and Mills are undertaking a lawsuit against the Fertility Center of Orlando and doctor Milton McNichol for negligence.
The fertility clinic has admitted that they had implanted the wrong embryo, as testing showed Steven’s sperm was mixed with an egg from another woman and Shea is 100 percent South Asian.
In their recent court hearing, Score and Mills said they found another fertility center to send their remaining frozen embryos from the Fertility Center of Orlando.
Photos shared on Score’s Facebook page depict a seemingly happy family-of-three. The couple and Shea are seen smiling and enjoying each other’s embraces.
The new mother said in a post that although their situation is ‘impossible and deeply frustrating,’ she and Mills are not angry.
‘What we are feeling right now isn’t anger, it’s gratitude. Gratitude and joy for our healthy, beautiful baby girl. Gratitude that we get to hold her, kiss her, and love her,’ she wrote.
‘She is the light of our lives and the one beautiful thing that has come from all of this. No matter how or why this happened, she is ours in every way that matters. The moments we share with her are everything.
‘We are so overwhelmed by the support we have received as we continue to seek answers about our own embryos, if they still exist, or if we may have biological children somewhere in the world.’
Tiffany said despite the mix-up, she and Mills formed an ‘intensely strong bond’ with Shea
Score had her eggs removed and joined with Mills’s sperm through in vitro fertilization six years ago. Their embryos were subsequently frozen, the lawsuit said.
She had an embryo transfer in February 2025, which failed, and a second one April 7 that same year, according to the complaint.
Embryos are stored in labelled straws before being slipped into a petri dish for rehydration and placed in an incubator to be monitored for one to two hours, the filing said. Afterwards, an embryo is implanted into the patient.
Jack Scarola, an attorney for the Mills, previously told the Daily Mail that despite finding the biological parents, there are still ‘remaining questions about the fate of Tiffany and Steven’s unaccounted for embryos.’
‘In addition, the safe transfer, confirmation of identity, and protection of the single remaining embryo the clinic attributes to our clients are still pending,’ he said.
The couple sued the clinic and their fertility doctor Milton McNichol for negligence in January
Lawyers for McNichol filed a motion to dismiss their lawsuit which proved unsuccessful.
They said the case should be tossed because: ‘Plaintiffs (1) fail to set forth a valid cause of action against Defendant; and (2) fail to otherwise meet the requirements for emergency and/or preliminary injunctive relief against the Defendant.’
They claimed the couple’s request to locate Shea’s biological parents would result in a violation of other patients’ privacy.
‘Plaintiffs cite no basis in any rule, statute or case which would give this Court any authority to require Defendant to go into patient files and contact patients of his practice who had embryos in storage in the Defendant’s office, to send an unsolicited copy of the Plaintiffs Amended Complaint and a copy of a photograph of the infant Plaintiff, somehow, with no description of how, affording these patients the opportunity to determine whether the infant Plaintiff might be their child or whether these patients may have been the recipient of one of their embryos,’ the filing states.
McNichol still has an active medical license, according to the Florida Department of Health. It is set to expire in January 2028.
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.
