ORLANDO, Fla. — A Central Florida couple is demanding answers from a Longwood fertility clinic after discovering the baby the woman gave birth to in mid-December is not their biological daughter.

Steven Mills and Tiffany Score also fear the possibility that at least one of their embryos — created in a laboratory from the couple’s sperm and eggs and then cryogenically frozen in 2020 — may have been erroneously implanted in another woman, who is now raising their biological child.

The couple have filed a lawsuit against IVF Life Inc. — which operates as Fertility Center of Orlando — and Dr. Milton McNichol. They want an Orange County judge to order the clinic to share what happened with other patients who had embryos stored at the facility during the year before Mills gave birth. They also want the judge to require the clinic to pay for the genetic testing of any child born under the clinic’s care in the past five years.

The couple also is demanding a full accounting of their embryos stored at the clinic.

Their infant girl was born Dec. 11, and Mills and Score are delighted to have her, Jack Scarola, one of their attorneys, said this week.

“They have fallen in love with this child,” said Scarola, a West Palm Beach attorney. “They would be thrilled in the knowledge that they could raise this child. But their concern is that this is someone else’s child, and someone could show up at any time and claim the baby and take that baby away from them.”

The couple feel it is their “moral and legal responsibility” to make every reasonable effort to find the biological parents of the baby girl and notify them, he said.

Scarola said the couple live in south Central Florida but did not provide any further details about them.

At an emergency hearing Wednesday afternoon before Circuit Court Judge Margaret Schreiber, lawyers for the couple and the clinic said they are quickly working on an agreement to resolve the couple’s demands. The clinic also has preliminarily agreed to do the genetic testing.

During the virtual hearing, both Mills and Score held the infant girl as she slept against their chests. They occasionally stroked and gently patted her on the back.

About five years ago, Mills and Score hired IVF Life to help them start a family by using in vitro fertilization, a specialized medical process in which a woman’s eggs are fertilized with sperm outside her body. The embryos are frozen until the couple decide to have them implanted into her uterus.

According to the lawsuit, one of the couple’s three embryos was implanted into Score on April 7, and she carried the fetus to full term.

She “gave birth to a beautiful, healthy female child,” according to the lawsuit.

However, the Caucasian couple soon realized their baby did not appear to be Caucasian, the lawsuit stated. Genetic tests ordered by the couple revealed the girl was not theirs.

Now, they are also worried that another woman is or was pregnant with one of their embryos.

Scarola said the couple filed the lawsuit on Jan. 22 after repeatedly trying to contact the clinic but getting no response. The longer the issue goes on, “the deeper the bonds between” the parents and child grow, he added.

On its website, Fertility Center of Orlando had a notice stating it is “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.”

The notice also stated that “multiple entities are involved in this process” and that the facility — located at an office complex, just north of State Road 434 — is “working diligently to help identify when and where the error may have occurred.”

But after Wednesday’s hearing, the notice was no longer displayed on the website.

In May 2024, the state’s Board of Medicine reprimanded McNichol and fined him $5,000, according to state documents.

The disciplinary action came after state officials conducted a routine inspection of the Longwood clinic in June 2023 and found several issues — including equipment that “did not meet current performance standards,” non-compliance with a risk management program, and missing medication. McNichol was also required to complete five hours of education for medical practitioners in the area of laws, rules and ethics, the documents show.

Part of the agreement being worked out now would require the clinic to disclose what happened to other patients who had embryos stored there at the time Score was implanted and to provide them a copy of the lawsuit and a photo of the baby girl.

Mara Hatfield, another of the couple’s attorneys, said at the hearing it’s important to go back to 2020, when the couple’s eggs “were put into cryo.”

“Perhaps the switch happened there,” Hatfield said, adding that it also could have occurred in the last year.

But there are concerns about the privacy rights of the clinic’s other patients and about protecting their identities, said Orlando attorney Francis Pierce III, who represents the clinic.

“Patients would have to agree to be tested,” he said. Pierce said he and the couple’s attorneys are working toward a quick settlement.

Some genetic tests may take four to six weeks to get results, and he is looking “is there a way to get it done any quicker than that,” he said.

Schreiber agreed the case needs to be expedited. She ordered the attorneys to submit more detailed plans to her by Friday.

“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,” she said.

Scarola agreed it is a difficult case because of the lack of precedent.

“Fortunately, it is very uncommon for such a horrendous error to have occurred,” he said.

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—Annie Martin of the Sentinel staff contributed to this story.

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