“This ends one chapter in our heartbreaking journey, but it raises new issues that will have to be resolved,” said Tiffany Score and Steven Mills
Credit: Courtesy of Steven Mills
NEED TO KNOW
- Tiffany Score and Steven Mills have announced they have identified their daughter’s birth parents after an embryo mix-up at a Florida-based IVF clinic
- The couple, who are suing the Fertility Center of Orlando, said they are keeping the parents’ identities “confidential”
- “This ends one chapter in our heartbreaking journey,” the couple said in their statement
A couple who filed a lawsuit after learning the baby they welcomed was not genetically related to them say they have finally identified their daughter's biological parents.
“The results of testing delivered to us today confirm that our baby's genetic parents have been identified," Tiffany Score and Steven Mills said in a statement obtained by PEOPLE and issued through their attorney, Jack Scarola, on Wednesday, April 22.
Score and Mills, who sued their IVF clinic last year, months before their names were made public, went on to say they would keep the identity of their daughter's biological parents "confidential," noting that they “fully intend to cooperate in respecting their privacy.”
“This ends one chapter in our heartbreaking journey, but it raises new issues that will have to be resolved,” said Score and Mills. “In addition, questions about the disposition of our own embryos are still unanswered and are even more unlikely to ever be answered."
"Only one thing is as absolutely certain today as it was on the day our daughter was born —we will love and will be this child's parents forever," they added of baby Shea, now 4 months old.
Scarola tells PEOPLE that "remaining questions about the fate of Tiffany and Steven's unaccounted for embryos…are still pending."
"The current legal proceeding will remain open to address those matters," Scarola adds. "However, we expect that we will now also begin to focus on the need for our clients to be compensated for the expenses they have incurred and the severe emotional trauma that they endured and will continue to experience."
The Fertility Center of Orlando did not immediately respond to PEOPLE's request for comment.
According to a lawsuit previously obtained by PEOPLE, Score and Mills turned to the Fertility Center of Orlando, in Longwood, Fla., for help starting their family.
Together, the couple produced and stored three viable embryos.
Last April, Score was allegedly implanted with what she thought was one of those embryos, something they say they never questioned throughout her pregnancy. But on Dec. 11, 2025, when the couple, who are both White, welcomed their baby Shea Score Mills, they saw the baby didn't look like either of them.
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The couple has said that while they love their daughter "more than words can express," they felt they had "a moral obligation to find her genetic parents."
In a previous statement obtained by PEOPLE, they said that by taking legal action, they hoped to "begin living more freely and to finally celebrate the one beautiful thing that has come from all of this: our daughter. Shea is completely innocent and so undeserving of any of this.”
Earlier this month, the Fertility Center of Orlando announced it was closing and that another clinic would be opening in the same facility.
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