Florida Fertility Clinic Implanted Wrong Embryo. The Two Families Just Settled Who Raises the Baby.

What Happened

In March 2025, Tiffany Score was implanted with an embryo at the Fertility Center of Orlando. She carried the pregnancy to term, and on December 11, 2025, gave birth to a healthy girl the couple named Shea.

The problem became visible at birth. Score and Steven Mills are both white. Shea was not. Genetic testing confirmed what the couple feared: Shea is 100 percent South Asian and biologically unrelated to either of them, according to court documents cited by the Orlando Sentinel and 98online.

Mills and Score filed an emergency lawsuit in January 2026 against the clinic and its lead reproductive endocrinologist, Dr. Milton McNichol, alleging the clinic implanted the wrong embryo.

The Agreement

As of June 16, 2026, a court filing in Orange County, Florida confirmed the two families have reached a custody arrangement. Score and Mills will remain Shea's permanent custodial parents. The specific terms are confidential.

Attorney Jack Scarola, representing Mills and Score, said the couple intends to "foster a relationship of friendship and trust" with Shea's biological parents, who are identified in court documents only as Patient 004. Their identities remain private at both families' request.

"I'm glad the parties have reached an agreement while this child is relatively young," Orlando Judge Margaret Schreiber said at a Tuesday hearing, per the Orlando Sentinel.

The couple's lawyer said the media attention actually helped. It surfaced the biological family, which resolved what had been a genuinely open legal and moral question about Shea's future.

The Clinic's Problems Go Deeper

The Fertility Center of Orlando announced it would close May 20, 2026. The closure followed this case directly, but the clinic's legal exposure extends beyond it.

According to The Guardian, the clinic also faces separate allegations of medical malpractice and negligence tied to a 2024 surrogate pregnancy in which the infant died shortly after birth. Those are allegations, not proven findings.

At Tuesday's hearing, Scarola raised a concern that goes beyond Shea's case: whether other patients at the clinic may have received the wrong embryos. He told the court more information may be needed about Patient 004 and others in the same egg retrieval group. Attorneys for Dr. McNichol and the clinic offered no updates on that question, according to 98online.

Mills and Score created three embryos at the clinic. One resulted in a miscarriage. One produced Shea. The third is unaccounted for, according to The Guardian and the Orlando Sentinel. The couple has since moved their remaining embryo to a new facility; DNA verification is expected within six weeks.

Scarola put the stakes plainly in a January 5 letter to the clinic, quoted in court documents by The Guardian: "In the absence of the racial disparity that alerted [Mills and Score] to your inexcusable error, the fact and results of the error might be concealed for years or left undiscovered indefinitely."

The Harder Question

The strongest concern here is not the legal settlement, which appears to have prioritized the child's stability. It's what this case reveals about IVF oversight nationwide.

This mix-up was caught because of a visible racial difference. There is no structured, mandatory genetic tracking system at most American fertility clinics that would catch a same-race embryo swap. No federal agency requires clinics to DNA-verify embryos before implantation. The FDA regulates fertility clinics narrowly, primarily around donor tissue. The CDC tracks success rates, not errors.

Parents going through IVF have no reliable way to know whether the embryo transferred is theirs until the child is born, and even then, only if they think to test.

Mills and Score have asked the court to require testing for other patients in their retrieval group. Whether the court compels that, and whether Dr. McNichol or the now-closed clinic can even comply, remains an open question as of June 18, 2026.

The civil lawsuit against the Fertility Center of Orlando and Dr. McNichol is ongoing. No criminal charges have been filed, and no investigation by state medical licensing authorities has been publicly announced.