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John Hartness has been practicing law in Atlanta for more than twenty years. As a sole practitioner, John concentrates in the areas of qualified retirement plans, executive compensation planning, employee benefits and deferred compensation arrangements. While most of his clients are small closely-held businesses, he also represents a number of governmental entities and large corporations with respect to their qualified retirement plans, welfare benefit plans and non-qualified deferred compensation arrangements for employees and directors.
Born in Sanford, North Carolina in 1949, John graduated from Duke University in 1970, majoring in political science. He taught in the public schools in Winston-Salem, North Carolina for nine years before deciding to enter law school. During the summers, he taught social sciences and philosophy at the Governor’s School of North Carolina. He obtained a Masters in Education from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 1978.
In 1982, John obtained his law degree, with honors, from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he served as Managing Editor of the North Carolina Law Review. He holds an LL.M. in Taxation from Emory University (1988). In 1991, John resigned as a partner in Greene, Buckley, Jones & McQueen to become Chief of the Professional Liability Section in the Legal Division of the Southeast regional office of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, a position he held until 1996, when he joined Morris, Manning & Martin, LLP. In 1998, he joined Silfen, Segal, Fryer & Shuster, P.C. In February of 2001, he opened his own law firm, John D. Hartness, Jr., P.C.
John has written or co-authored several law review articles (published in the North Carolina Law Review and the Mercer Law Review) and a portion of McQueen and Crestol’s Federal Tax Aspects of Bankruptcy. Speaking engagements in recent years include the following:
- Lorman Education Services, “Key Issues in Pension Plan Development in Georgia,” Atlanta, March 19, 2003
- Lorman Education Services, “Integrating Retirement Plans into the Estate Planning Process in Georgia,” Atlanta, May 2001
- Georgia Institute for Continuing Legal Education, “Qualified Retirement Plans,” Atlanta, December 2000
- CPAmerica, Employee Benefits Roundtable, “Distribution Planning: SIMPLE, SEP and IRA Distribution Options,” and �(k) Safe Harbors,” Washington, D.C., November 2000
- North Atlanta Tax Council, “Qualified Plans and IRAs: Beneficiary Designations and Distributions,” Atlanta, January 2000
- Georgia Institute for Continuing Legal Education’s Representing Small and Start-up Businesses, “Compensation Primer for a Small Business Owner,” Atlanta, September 1998 and 1999
- Cobb County Estate Planning Council, “Distributions from Qualified Retirement Plans and Traditional IRAs,” Marietta, Georgia, September 1999
- National Business Institute, “Setting Up a Small Business – Organizational Details,” Atlanta, May 1998 and 1999
- Red Hills Tax Institute, “IRA Distribution Planning,” Thomasville, Georgia, October 1998
- Georgia Federal Tax Conference, “Tax Planning Issues Involved with Employee Ownership of Employer Stock,” Atlanta, June 1998
John currently serves as a member of the Board of Directors and Government Affairs Coordinator of the Atlanta ASPPA Benefits Council of Atlanta (“ABC of Atlanta”).
He and his wife, Brenda Buchanan, live in Atlanta with their pets. Their hobbies include art and travel, and their favorite pastime is working on their second home in the North Carolina mountains.
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