Ned Sproston

Ned is a specialist Private Children and Matrimonial Finance barrister with a decade of experience in both those fields.

As an experienced specialist Private Children practitioner, Ned is very well placed to help parties who want to agree the living arrangements for their children after separation. Known for his relaxed, friendly manner, Ned believes that people make the best decisions for their children when the heat is taken out things, and he always seeks to place everyone at their ease. Sometimes people just want to hear from an experienced, neutral expert who will listen to all the circumstances of their family’s situation and who can then carefully explain what they think a court would be likely to decide if the parties go through the court process. The reality is, parties either need to agree to child arrangements upon separation or a court will impose something, so it can be very eye opening and, hopefully, very helpful to hear what an expert thinks the end result may well be, and importantly why that is likely to be the case, if a court is tasked with imposing arrangements. Nobody wants a stranger to decide important issues to do with their children, so it is normally much better to agree arrangements than have them imposed by the court. Ned strongly agrees with that sentiment, will not “sit on the fence” and will always provide an impartial, honest and unvarnished appraisal of any situation presented to him so that the parties are best placed to form a well-reasoned view of what arrangements might work best for their family and their children.

Ned regularly represents clients at all stages of matrimonial finance proceedings in the family court, including Financial Dispute Resolution Appointments (FDRs). Ned is available both as an advocate at private FDRs and also as a private FDR Judge. When selecting an appropriate private judge to provide an appraisal of your case it is important to consider the complexity of the issues involved, the value of the assets in “the pot” and the budgets the parties have available to spend in resolving the issues. Ned has been in practice in this field for a decade and as such has the necessary experience to competently advise on most modest asset cases whilst still charging reasonable fees that may be affordable to many typical households. This means that Ned represents a “good value for money option” as a private FDR judge for the more straight forward cases with relatively modest assets, where budgets are tight and where the circumstances neither require nor justify the expense of very senior counsel.

Matrimonial Finance

Published case:

Ozturk v Ozturk [2025] EWFC 333 (B) - case report available on bailii

Private Children

M v F (2025): Represented the mother in an application in the High Court for permission to take the children out of the jurisdiction to a non-Hague Convention country for the purposes of a holiday.

E v F (2025): An early pathfinder case where agreement was reached through negotiation despite a number of areas of initial disagreement.

E: clerks@broadwayhouse.co.uk

T: 01274 722 560 or 0113 246 2600