Vera K. Hartford
Practice Areas:
Family Law; Child Custody; Divorce; Family Mediation; Collaborative Law.
Education:
Law School: John F. Kennedy University; J.D., 1979
College: University of California, Berkeley; B.A., 1970
Member:
- The State Bar of California (admitted 1979)
- Alameda County Bar Association (Family Law Section)
- Collaborative Professionals of the East Bay
Biography:
Vera Hartford brings many years of experience as a family law practitioner to her litigation, mediation, and collaborative practice. After graduating from U.C. Berkeley and J.F. Kennedy Law School, she focused solely on family law, receiving her Family Law Specialist Certification in 1985. Vera has dealt with a wide range of issues from traditional divorces, custody disputes, and dissolving domestic partnerships, to negotiating premarital agreements and serving as a Special Master.
Having litigated a great number of divorce cases, Vera found that the courts did not always provide an effective forum for positive and constructive solutions for families in crisis. In 2002, Vera began divide her practice between litigation and collaborative divorce and mediation. She found the collaborative process to be very effective in assisting some of her clients move through this particularly challenging stage of their lives. There are still number of clients who are served better by utilizing the court system on an as-needed basis.
Vera has served on the Board of Directors of the California Association of Certified Family Law Specialists and on the State Bar Commission for Family Code Enactment.
Currently, Vera is a member of Collaborative Practice East Bay. She serves on the Steering, Training and Public Education Committees of CPEB. For the past six years she has been a member of CLACC (Collaborative Law, Alameda and Contra Costa), one of the parent organizations of CPEB. She is a member of the International Academy of Collaborative Professionals. Vera works with her East Bay clients from her Pleasanton office, and her San Francisco and Peninsula clients from her San Francisco office.
Languages:
Czech