Stephen Tatum

Stephen was raised in the Florida Panhandle, attending and graduating from Altha High School in Calhoun County. Stephen went on to attend Chipola College in Marianna before graduating with honors from the University of Florida with a B.S. in Public Relations in 2002. He then, during the height of the housing boom, went to work in his family’s residential construction business for several years, before eventually taking a job with the City of Marianna as a city planner in 2007.  In 2013, Stephen was accepted to the Florida State University College of Law and graduated with his Juris Doctor in 2016.

After graduating from law school, Stephen and his family moved to Niceville and he accepted a position with Matthews & Matthews in its Destin office, where he focuses primarily on real estate development, land use, and local government-related legal and planning issues in and around Okaloosa, Walton, and Bay Counties. Through his experience in both the construction and city planning arenas, along with his close ties to north Florida, Stephen has developed a wealth of knowledge and a particularized understanding of the intricacies associated with real estate development work.

While practicing as an attorney, Stephen has defended several clients against local governments for such things as denied permitting, Bert Harris Act claims, short-term rental prohibition/regulation, and illegally granted variance requests. He regularly appears before local regulatory boards advocating for his clients’ property rights. Thanks to the Walton County Customary Use lawsuit, Stephen is also very familiar with riparian (littoral) rights and beach and water access issues. He is also an Executive Council member of the Environmental and Land Use Law Section of the Florida Bar.