Question: Because I will be retiring soon, my wife and I have begun the "estate planning" process that we should have started years ago. We bought a couple of books, but never completed them because they are boring. We decided to hire a lawyer to handle this for us. Is there a "cheat sheet" we can use to define what we want?

Answer: If you hire an electrician to fix a faulty socket, you are looking for a quality result, not a lesson on how he did it. Planning your estate is not much different. You and your wife must first decide what goals are important to you and then prioritize them so that, when you meet with your lawyer, he or she will know how to prepare the documents that are necessary for you to implement your plan. Here are some sample goals which you and your wife can "grade" in order of importance based on your particular situation:

1. Avoid paying estate taxes (if you and your wife will have taxable estates); 2. Avoid paying probate costs (if you and your wife live in a state where the cost of probate is high); 3. Make sure children of prior marriages are not left out (if either you or your wife have been divorced or widowed); 4. Plan for the consequences of long-term care and disability (by use of disability or long-term care insurance); 5. Make gifts to charities if you are so inclined; 6. Assure that a beneficiary who would otherwise inherit from you will receive nothing or a limited share; 7. Make provisions for a handicapped or disabled child or spouse through appropriate trusts; 8. Establish a pattern or gifting to children or grandchildren during your lifetime; 9. Protect beneficiaries from blowing their inheritance by doling it out over time; 10. Make sure your spouse is protected by use of an insurance trust or other source of income that will keep him or her comfortable if you die first; 11. Provide for guardians for minor children; 12. Avoid family quarrels over what you decide to do.

Once you have established your goals, communicate then to your lawyer and let him or her take it from there.

Question: My wife and I have three children, two of whom are responsible individuals. The third is a spendthrift who has always had debt problems. We thought this would subside when he got married, but she is no better than he. Although we want to treat our children equally, we have nightmares about dumping a lot of money out there for him and his wife to squander. Any suggestions?

Answer: Unless you have a taxable estate that requires more complex planning, each spouse will generally leave all assets to the other and, at the death of the second spouse, distributions of what is left will be made to the children.

In your situation, at the second death, you and your wife may want to consider dividing the residue of your property into three equal shares, two of which would be distributed outright to your financially responsible children. The third share would be placed into a trust for your "financially challenged" child.

The trustee should be given the discretion, not the obligation, to distribute trust income and, to a limited extent, trust principal, upon a showing of good cause by this son. You might want to build into the language of this trust an obligation on the part of your son to provide the trustee with copies of his tax returns and credit reports so that, if your son is clearing up his debt, the trustee can provide additional benefits as incentives. Properly drafted, this type of trust should prevent creditors from attaching the proceeds.

Decisions like these are difficult to make, especially since your financially challenged child will probably be hurt that he was not treated like the others. To avoid family disputes after your death, you may want to discuss your concerns with this child now. And, if you choose to establish this type of trust, you will probably not want to make either of your other children trustee as this may add to family conflict.