VERA HARTFORD Blaha, Hartford & Perry, PC 4900 Hopyard Road, Suite 240 Pleasanton, CA 94588 Phone: 925 734-9000 Fax: 925 734-9195 E-mail: vkh@bhp-law.com Web: www.bhp-law.com IACP Profile Vera Hartford brings many years of experience as a Family Law practitioner to her 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 provide an effective forum for positive and constructive solutions for families in crisis. In 2002, Vera began to focus on Collaborative Divorce and Mediation. She found the Collaborative Process to be very effective in assisting her clients move through this particularly challenging stage of their lives. Utilizing a creative problem-solving team approach, she helps her clients to re-structure their families around the new reality of two households. 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. After the Berlin Wall fell, Vera represented the American Bar Association in its Central and Eastern European Legal Initiative, which helped former communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe reform their legal systems. Vera led a team which brought profound changes to Family Law Statutes, including forming a child custody evaluation program. 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 LACC (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. close window