Matthew Hart graduated from John F. Kennedy University School of Law in Pleasant Hill, California. He has been specializing in Estate Planning for his entire legal career. He is a California State Bar Certified Legal Specialist in Estate Planning, Trust & Probate Law. This specialization is distinguished by the fact that out of 190,657 active attorneys in California, only 1,039 are currently certified legal specialists in the area of Estate Law (as of June 2019). He has attended Continuing Legal Education classes in “Drafting effective Wills and Trusts”, “Advanced Estate Planning Techniques”, and “Fundamental Probate Procedures and Practice”. He is a California State Bar certified speaker on “Avoiding Financial Elder Abuse”.
Matthew has been an adjunct professor teaching Business Law at the Master College, Walnut Creek campus. In his class, he was able to impart his law knowledge along with general business principals to teach students how to mitigate risk, and identify situations where consulting an attorney would be crucial for a business.
Matthew has taught classes for CEB (CEB is a non-profit program of the University of California) for practicing attorneys on preparing for the Estate Planning Trust and Probate Specialist exam and Ethics for Estate Planning Attorneys.
Matthew Hart is the author of the following articles published in the Contra Costa Lawyer monthly magazine:
Estate Planning for Digital Assets: Has Technology Taken Us Back to the Wild West?
Office Systems for the Solo Professional
Matthew is a board member for the Trust and Estates section of the Contra Costa County Bar Association.
Prior to becoming an attorney, Matthew Hart attended Eugene Bible College and spent 20 years in the information technology sector as a Senior Server Engineer and Manager of Intel Server Architecture. He worked for such companies as Barclays Global Investors, Compucom, and Bechtel.
He has a wife of 31 years and an adult daughter. As a result, this life experience allows him to uniquely understand client issues related to Estate Planning.
Matthew Hart is a member of the following organizations:
California State Bar, Trust and Estates Section
California State Bar, Legal Specialization – Estate Planning, Trust & Probate Law
Contra Costa County Bar Association, Trust and Estates Section – Board Member
East Bay Trust and Estates Lawyers
Estate Planning Council of Diablo Valley
Better Business Bureau
Antioch Chamber of Commerce, Board of Directors, Chairman of the Board (2014)
The Bay Church
Matthew has been a part of different podcasts such as these:
