Florida couple given wrong embryo will retain permanent custody of their child

A Florida couple who learned they had been given the wrong embryo after their newborn, Shea, appeared to be of a different race, will retain permanent custody of the child. Steven Mills and Tiffany Score reached a custody agreement with Shea’s biological parents – identified anonymously as Patient 004 – in a court filing last week from their lawsuit against the Florida clinic allegedly responsible for the embryo snafu. Last year, Mills and Score enlisted the services of the Fertility Center of Orlando to conceive a baby through in-vitro fertilization. After a healthy pregnancy, Score gave birth to their daughter in December 2025, but the couple, who are both Caucasian, suspected something was amiss as their child did not also appear to be white. Subsequent genetic testing confirmed Shea was not biologically related to either Mills or Score. In January, the couple sought via their lawsuit for the clinic to identify Shea’s biological parents and to also pay for the genetic testing of children born to other patients to determine if one of their original embryos had been subject to another mix-up. …