Older dependent relatives

Just a quick post on this to highlight an extremely useful case that’s been handed down today. I’ve been horribly busy so the blog has been suffering a bit, I’m afraid.

The case is ZB (Pakistan) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2009] EWCA Civ 834. It provides a really useful summary of the domestic and Strasbourg case law relevant to relationships between an older parent and his or her adult children and wider family.

In the judgment, the Court of Appeal emphasises the importance of Article 8 relationships, holds that Article 8 must be examined holistically, not compartmentalised into individual one-on-one relationships in a divide-and-conquer type approach, observes that earlier cases suggesting relationships between adults require something above and beyond the usual ties are rather elderly cases and holds that the threshold for engagement of Article 8 in such cases is not a particularly high one, and also reminds us that the test for whether a whole family can relocate to the appellant’s home country is just whether it is reasonable to expect this.

The tribunal had originally held that there was no Article 8 right engaged by the facts of the case at all, a somewhat surprising conclusion given the facts.