Tiffany Score and Steven Mills IVF Embryo Mix-Up Lawsuit

Tiffany Score and Steven Mills, a Florida couple, sued the Fertility Center of Orlando and its founder Dr. Milton McNichol after Score gave birth in December 2025 to a daughter who genetic testing later confirmed had no biological connection to either parent. Their IVF embryo mix-up lawsuit, filed January 22, 2026, in Orange County Circuit Court, has produced a private custody agreement letting Score and Mills keep the child permanently, but their malpractice claims against the now-closed Longwood clinic remain active as of mid-2026.¹

What Went Wrong at the Clinic

Score and Mills began working with the Fertility Center of Orlando around 2020. That March, Score underwent egg retrieval, and the couple produced three viable embryos that were cryogenically frozen at the clinic’s Longwood facility.¹ On April 7, 2025, Dr. McNichol transferred an embryo the clinic said belonged to the couple. Score gave birth to a daughter, Shea Score Mills, on December 11, 2025.²

Something looked wrong immediately. Score and Mills are both White, and the newborn appeared to be of a different racial background. Genetic testing confirmed the suspicion: Shea had no genetic relationship to either parent and was determined to be 100% South Asian.³

The Lawsuit and What It Asked For

The couple filed suit on January 22, 2026, in Orange County Circuit Court against IVF Life Inc., which operated the Fertility Center of Orlando, and Dr. Milton McNichol. They are represented by attorney Mara Hatfield of Searcy Denney Scarola Barnhart & Shipley.⁴

The complaint went beyond a claim for money. Score and Mills asked the court to force a full accounting of their stored embryos, to require the clinic to identify and notify every patient who had embryos in storage during the relevant window, and to make the clinic pay for genetic testing of any child born through the facility over the preceding five years.⁵ The filing also sought compensation for expenses and what it described as “severe emotional trauma.”⁶

In court filings, neither the clinic nor Dr. McNichol disputed that Shea “should be, but is not, the genetic child” of Score and Mills.³ Defense attorneys said the clinic was cooperating with requests for DNA testing on other couples, though Score and Mills reported no substantive response after first contacting the clinic on January 5, 2026.⁷ Circuit Court Judge Margaret Schreiber ordered expedited resolution and scheduled weekly status hearings to push the clinic’s internal investigation forward.⁸

How the Biological Parents Were Found

Investigators looked at two possible points of error: March 26, 2020, when Score’s eggs were retrieved and fertilized, and April 5, 2025, when the embryo was transferred. At a February 18 hearing, counsel said the error most likely happened at the earlier date, though the implantation-day scenario had not been ruled out.⁹

The clinic identified 16 sets of potential parents whose retrieval and transfer dates overlapped with Score’s. One was a South Asian couple, and testing was expedited for that family.³ A second woman came forward independently after seeing news coverage; she had undergone a transfer on the same day as Score and had given birth to a boy in December 2025 whose complexion, she said, resembled Score’s husband.⁸

On April 22, 2026, Score and Mills announced that DNA testing had confirmed the identity of Shea’s biological mother, referred to in court documents as “Patient 004.” She was the only patient in the March 2020 retrieval group whose self-reported ethnicity matched the child’s.¹⁰ The biological parents’ names have not been made public, and they have not issued any statements.¹¹

The Custody Agreement

A confidential custody agreement between the two families was disclosed in a June 12, 2026, court filing. Under it, Score and Mills will remain Shea’s permanent custodial parents.¹⁰ The specific terms remain private, though court documents indicated both sets of parents planned to meet in person to discuss next steps.¹²

In a statement released through their attorneys, Score and Mills said: “This ends one chapter in our heartbreaking journey, but it raises new issues that will have to be resolved. Only one thing is as absolutely certain today as it was on the day our daughter was born — we will love and will be this child’s parents forever.”¹¹

What happened to the couple’s own biological embryos is still unresolved. The clinic identified one frozen embryo it claimed belonged to Score and Mills, and it was moved to a new facility for genetic testing.¹³ As of April 2026, parentage testing on that final embryo was still pending, and the emergency portion of the case will stay open until all questions about the couple’s missing embryos are answered.¹⁰

The Defendant Clinic and Dr. McNichol

The Fertility Center of Orlando was operated by IVF Life Inc. and IVF Orlando Inc. and founded by Dr. Milton McNichol, a reproductive endocrinologist licensed in Florida since 2004.¹⁴ Its record was troubled well before the mix-up became public. A June 2023 Florida Department of Health inspection found equipment that did not meet performance standards and missing medication, among other compliance failures. In May 2024, the Florida Board of Medicine reprimanded McNichol and fined him $5,000 over those findings.¹

The clinic filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in October 2024, listing estimated liabilities between $1 million and $10 million against assets of $100,000 to $500,000. A reorganization plan was confirmed in September 2025, but the clinic’s debts had not been discharged as of early 2026.¹⁵ A separate Seminole County man had also sued over the alleged destruction of his frozen sperm, and McNichol settled that case for an undisclosed sum in January 2026.¹⁶

The Fertility Center of Orlando ceased operations on March 30, 2026, directing patients to transition their care to CNY Fertility. Patients with frozen embryos or other cryopreserved specimens had until April 15, 2026, to arrange transfers to CNY Fertility or another licensed facility.¹⁷ Court records indicate McNichol began selling the clinic effective May 1, 2026, and that the incoming owners would not assume IVF Life’s existing liabilities.¹⁸ McNichol’s Florida medical license remains active.¹⁴

What’s Still Pending

The custody piece is settled, but the malpractice case isn’t. Counsel for Score and Mills said in June 2026 that they intend to pursue claims for “malpractice committed by Dr. McNichol, the embryologists at issue, and the various clinics and laboratories with which they were associated.”¹⁰ A status conference was scheduled for June 15, 2026. The emergency matter will stay open until the parentage testing on the couple’s remaining embryo finishes and the full scope of the clinic’s errors is determined. Neither McNichol nor his attorneys have responded publicly to the substance of the mix-up allegations beyond the statement in court that the clinic was cooperating with the investigation.

How Other Embryo Mix-Up Cases Have Gone

Cases like this are rare in the United States but not unheard of, and outcomes have varied. In a 2019 Los Angeles case involving multiple wrong embryo transfers, a family court judge ordered the non-biological parents to surrender custody to the genetic parents when the child was six months old. The civil claims eventually settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.¹⁹

A review of 53 IVF-related malpractice cases filed between 1993 and 2022 found that embryology errors accounted for nearly half of all claims. Financial awards in those cases ran from roughly $4,000 to nearly $15 million, with the largest coming from a 2018 class action over a cryostorage tank failure at a San Francisco clinic. Defendants prevailed in just over half of the resolved cases, plaintiffs won about a quarter, and the rest were still pending at the time of review.²⁰

Courts have also split on the legal parentage question when genetics and gestation don’t align. Some have favored a genetic test, treating the biological parents as the legal parents; others have relied on intent, asking who planned to raise the child. A few states allow more than two legal parents, though judges remain reluctant to designate them.²¹ The private agreement between Score, Mills, and the biological parents kept a Florida court from having to rule on those questions in this case.

1
Orlando Sentinel. Horrendous Error: Central Florida Couple Sues Fertility Clinic Because Baby Isn’t Genetically Theirs
2
People. Couple in IVF Embryo Mixup Says Daughter’s Biological Parents Have Been Identified
3
NBC News. IVF Clinic Accused of Embryo Mix-Up Closes Amid Legal and Financial Problems
4
Orlando Sentinel. Unnamed Couple Agrees to Genetic Testing in Embryo Mix-Up Case
5
Click Orlando. Mom Sues Central Florida Clinic After Giving Birth to the Wrong Baby
6
Global News. IVF Mix-Up Couple Tiffany Score and Steven Mills Florida Fertility Clinic Embryo Biological Parents
7
WESH. Central Florida Couple Searches for Baby’s Parents After IVF Mix-Up
8
Orlando Sentinel. Attorney: Second Woman Comes Forward in Embryo Mix-Up
9
Florida Today. Fertility Clinic IVF Testing: Couple Involved in Florida Embryo Mix-Up
10
Fox 35 Orlando. Florida IVF Mix-Up Parents Reach Custody Agreement After Embryo Error at Orlando Area Clinic
11
AOL. Biological Parents of Baby in IVF Embryo Mix-Up Identified
12
Click Orlando. Custody Agreement Reached for Florida Baby at Center of IVF Mix-Up
13
NBC News. Florida Couple in IVF Embryo Mix-Up Will Keep Baby Not Genetically Theirs
14
Florida Department of Health. Healthcare Provider Details: Milton W. McNichol
15
PACER Monitor. IVF Orlando, Inc. Bankruptcy Case
16
Click Orlando. Longwood Fertility Clinic Faced Discipline, Bankruptcy, Lawsuits Before Closure
17
Fox 35 Orlando. Orlando Fertility Clinic Sued Over IVF Mix-Up Closes Operations
18
WESH. Central Florida IVF Clinic Closes Following Lawsuits
19
PMC/National Library of Medicine. IVF Malpractice Litigation Review
20
ScienceDirect. IVF Malpractice Litigation Analysis
21
Journal of Medical Ethics. Legal Parentage in IVF Embryo Mix-Up Cases