A couple has been left gobsmacked after having a baby who they aren't related to.
Tiffany Score and Steven Mills, from Florida, were thrilled to welcome a child into the world, after enlisting the help of a fertilisation clinic to achieve their dreams.
The pair hired company IVF Life to help them conceive around five years ago, by using in vitro fertilisation (IVF), which involves a woman's eggs and a man's sperm to be fertilised outside the former's body.
These embryos are frozen until the parents are ready to have them implanted in the woman, which was decided upon in April 2025 by Tiffany and Steven.
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They were over the moon to welcome a girl into their family this month, but soon realised that IVF Life, operating as The Fertility Center of Orlando, may have made a huge mistake.
While both Tiffany and Steven are white, the baby appeared to be 'a racially non-Caucasian child', says a lawsuit made against the clinic say local outlet News6.
To uncover the truth, they carried out genetic testing, confirming their fears - the baby was not biologically theirs.
This lawsuit was filed on 22 January after a number of unsuccessful attempts to contact the clinic.
Jack Scarola, one of the couple's lawyers, told the Orlando Sentinel that 'they have fallen in love with this child', only fearing that if it is someone else's child, that 'someone could show up at any time' and 'take that baby away from them'.
The couple are also worried that one of their three fertilised eggs which were frozen, had been implanted into someone else by mistake, as they demand that the clinic reveal what happened with other patients who stored embryos with IVF Life.
They are also asking that the company pay for the genetic testing of every child born via their services in the last five years, as well as the clinic accounting for their missing embryos.
Speaking in a statement to News6, the Florida couple said: "We would hope to be able to continue to raise her ourselves with confidence that she won’t be taken away from us.
"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," they said, adding that they 'love our little girl'.
The filing names IVF Life LLC and Dr Milton McNichol, who runs the clinic, as The Fertility Center of Orlando shared in a since-deleted notice on its website that they are '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.'
It was removed following a hearing for the case on Wednesday (28 January), with the judge ordering the clinic to submit a detailed plan for handling this situation by Friday.
Back in May 2024, Florida's Board of Medicine reprimanded McNichol after numerous issues were found in a June 2023 inspection of the clinic.
They stated that equipment 'did not meet current performance standards', while the practice missed medication and didn't comply with a risk-management agenda - though the head was only fined $5,000 for these violations, say the Orlando Sentinel.
Following the emergency meeting on Wednesday, Judge Margaret Schreiber stated: “There’s not a lot of Florida law for you all to reach a resolution that will provide the answers that the plaintiffs in this case are seeking, and the protections that the defendants are wanting to ensure remain in place for their clients.”
Joshua Nair