When Biology and Law Collide: The IVF Mix-Up That Broke Two Families

Imagine finding out that the baby you carried for nine months, the child you’ve been raising since birth, isn’t biologically yours. That’s the nightmare that became real for Tiffany Score and Steven Mills when the Fertility Center of Orlando implanted the wrong embryo—a mistake that set off a chain reaction of heartbreak across two families.

Here’s what happened: Score and Mills gave birth to their daughter, Shea, only to learn she wasn’t their biological child. The fertility clinic’s error meant another couple’s embryo had been placed inside Tiffany’s body. That other couple—whose identities haven’t been made public—suddenly found themselves with a different outcome than they’d expected when they handed over their genetic material for IVF treatment. The mix-up created an impossible situation: two sets of parents, one child, and no clear answer about what comes next.

The solution, which came after meetings described by the biological parents’attorney Rob Marcereau as tearful and emotionally exhausting, was for Score and Mills to retain full custody. But calling it a solution feels hollow when you understand what it cost. Marcereau told NBC News that his clients are devastated. They made what he described as a“heartbreaking decision to not fight for custody,”recognizing that the laws in Florida—and across the U.S.—are stacked in favor of whoever actually gives birth to a child. Any custody battle would have been, in his words, an“incredibly uphill legal battle.”More importantly, the biological parents concluded that a prolonged legal war wouldn’t serve Shea’s best interests. Though the custody agreement reportedly allows them to remain in the child’s life, it’s a far cry from the parenthood they’d hoped for.

What makes this even more infuriating is that Marcereau called the clinic’s error“inexcusable”—a word that barely scratches the surface. This isn’t a minor paperwork mishap. This is a fundamental breach of trust by a facility entrusted with people’s dreams of becoming parents. Both Score and Mills, and the biological parents, are now suing the Fertility Center of Orlando and Dr. Milton McNichol, the lead reproductive endocrinologist.

The case raises uncomfortable questions about accountability in fertility medicine and the gap between what the law allows and what feels just. Two families are permanently altered because of a mistake that should never have happened. Score and Mills get to parent their daughter, but under circumstances no one would choose. The biological parents get to visit, but they’re not her parents in any legal sense. Shea grows up knowing her story is fractured at its foundation. And the clinic? It faces lawsuits, but nothing can undo the emotional damage already done.

This is what happens when a system designed to create life goes catastrophically wrong—and when the legal system proves inadequate to address the moral complexity of the fallout.