I met a very nice lady this week, although I'm not sure how she found her way up to my office.

She recently lost her husband and was in the middle of settling his affairs.

She handed me a check that she had received from an insurance company. The check was made payable to a trust and she was having trouble cashing it. The problem, as she saw it, was she didn't have a trust.

After reviewing the check, she handed me a pile of papers to look at. As I flipped through the pages, I came across the wills. Both her and her husband's wills left everything to their joint revocable trust. The wills were your run-of-the-mill pour over wills people execute when they create a trust.

As I dug deeper in the pile of documents, I found an amendment to a joint trust, which changed the trustees. Both her and her husband signed the amendment. Although this nice lady swore up and down that there wasn't a trust, all evidence pointed to the contrary. I looked for the name of the attorney that drafted the amendment and wills, but the only thing I could find was the name of a financial planner. I asked her, but she told me she never met with an attorney.

Now I understood. A very well-intentioned financial planner assisted this couple with their estate plan. He then took the information to an attorney who prepared the documents. The documents were returned to the financial planner who probably did his best to explain the documents to them and helped them execute the plan. Ignoring the unauthorized practice of law implications, I'm sure the financial planner was simply providing a service to his clients.

I have two things I want you to take away from this story. The first is to be careful who provides you estate-planning advice. Don't get me wrong, you don't have to be an attorney to understand estate planning. Although my old boss, Bob Scott, isn't an attorney, he probably knows more about trusts than a lot of attorneys. However, he's not out there peddling them. Here's a good rule of thumb: if you don't meet with the attorney face-to-face before executing your estate plan, be skeptical. You need that face-to-face contact.

The second thing to remember is that estate planning can become confusing. A will and a living will sound a lot alike, as do a living will and a living trust. However, each of these documents serves different functions. It's important to know the difference.

You don't need to know every detail about the documents that make up your estate plan, but you should at least have a basic understanding of them. If you don't understand, ask questions. Don't be shy. Your attorney will be happy to answer all of your questions. Trust me, your attorney would rather answer a dozen silly questions than miss the one important one.

Opinions are solely the writer's. Christopher W. Yugo is a member of the Indiana Bar and a vice president and senior trust Officer for First National Bank's Trust Department. Address questions to Yugo in care of The Times, 601 W. 45th Ave., Munster, IN, 46321. Yugo's information is meant to be general in nature. Specific legal, tax, or insurance questions should be referred to your attorney, accountant or estate-planning specialist.