Tiffany S. and Steven M. are having a baby girl in December. The fresh family happiness is quickly clouded. Now they are drawing conclusions.
02/02/2026, 09:3702/02/2026, 12:01
Anouschka Hamp / t-online
In the US state of Florida, a couple has filed a lawsuit against an Orlando fertility clinic and its doctor after he inserted a foreign egg into their woman’s body in April last year. The mother gave birth in December. Shortly afterwards, the parents began to have doubts about the child’s relationship, several media outlets reported unanimously. A DNA test confirmed the suspicion a little later: the little girl and her parents were not biologically related. Now the parents want answers.
Tiffany S. and Steven M. both have light skin and blonde and brown hair, respectively. They are of “Caucasian descent,” the US television station News 6 quotes the indictment as saying. In contrast, her little daughter would have darker skin and black hair – and thus the “appearance of a non-Caucasian child”. This worried the parents.
Because now there is the possibility at any time that the birth parents could show up and take the baby away from them, one of their lawyers explained to the newspaper “Orlando Sentinel”. They had fallen in love with the child and “would be happy to know that they were allowed to raise this child,” the lawyer continued.
The two parents have contacted their clinic, the Fertility Center of Orlando, several times, but there has been no response.
Parents make three demands
That’s why they’ve now gone to court, according to the newspaper. The parents are said to have made three demands. On the one hand, the clinic should be instructed to disclose what happened to the other patients who were treated in the clinic in the year before the birth. On the one hand, it is intended to find out whether one of the couple’s embryos was mistakenly implanted into another woman. On the other hand, other parents should be made aware of the error.
The clinic should also cover the costs of genetic tests. These should include all children born under the care of the clinic in the past five years. The reason for the period is that M. and S. had their eggs fertilized in the clinic in 2020 and had stored them there since then, according to the US newspaper.
The third demand includes complete transparency on the part of the clinic, it was said. This should prompt the clinic to disclose all discrepancies that arise from the above-mentioned examinations.
At a hearing in Orlando on Wednesday, the clinic’s representatives agreed to reach a quick agreement to resolve the matter. The request for DNA testing has already been provisionally agreed, according to the Orlando Sentinel. At the same time, the clinic committed to sending a copy of the lawsuit and a photo of M. and S.’s daughter to all affected parents over the past five years. This makes it possible to check whether the “exchange” had already taken place some time ago, explained another lawyer for the couple.