Judgment was handed down today in the case of VE v AO, Royal Borough of Greenwich & South East London CCG [2020] EWCOP 23 in which Alev Giz represented the applicant on her application for an order that it was in her mother’s best interests to leave her care home and move to live her last days with her daughter in the light of her mother’s diagnosis with terminal cancer and the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

Lieven J held that the ability to die with one’s family and loved ones was “one of the most fundamental parts of any right to private and family life” and that “a decision by the state that prevents someone with a terminal disease from living with their family, must require a particularly high degree of justification under article 8(2).” She therefore concluded that it was in P’s  best interests to leave the care home immediately to live with her daughter, and to live out her days and die surrounded by her family.