Pay Dirt is Slate’s money advice column. Have a question? Send it to Kristin and Ilyce here. (It’s anonymous!)

Dear Pay Dirt,

My wife and I (late 50s) recently visited a financial advisor at the recommendation of our life insurance agent. We are very well set for retirement and were asked how we want to spend for retirement, lifestyle-wise, and what kind of “legacy” we want to leave for our three children. The legacy question was surprisingly a point of contention between us.

When my wife’s mom passed away (her father had died a few years before), there wasn’t much, if anything, left in her estate for my wife and her siblings to divide up after paying the bills. My parents were better off, and I was left enough money that we paid off our house (approximately $50,000), and we became debt free, which helped our retirement savings significantly as our house payment went into savings/investments.

I would like to do what my parents did: leave our kids enough money to help them, but use our retirement savings/income to basically live the same lifestyle we are living now. But listening to my wife talk, she wants to have our kids “set for life” and thinks we need to have a very conservative retirement lifestyle, spending-wise, to make the money last in order to give them a substantial amount when we pass away.

I know we will reach a “happy medium” at some point, but what is your opinion on leaving children a “legacy,” especially a comparatively large one, that possibly limits the things I would like to do in retirement or at a minimum continue our current lifestyle?

—Leaving a Legacy, but How Much

Dear Leaving a Legacy, but How Much,

You asked for my opinion. I think you got a gift that helped you do something significant—you paid off your home, and that allowed you to boost your retirement savings. But, you did the rest yourself: You earned, saved, invested, and are now at a point where you get to enjoy the fruit of all that labor.

The question I’d ask your wife is this: Can anyone actually be set for life, given that we have no idea what curveballs are coming for us? Absent $20 million or more, probably not and even then, I’d wonder. None of us knows what’s coming. A child could face a serious illness or life-long disability. One of your kids could start a business that fails or lose half of everything in a nasty divorce. Maybe they want to or have to step back from their job into a caregiving role. Or, maybe A.I. replaces them.

Money helps in some of those situations, but not all. And, it doesn’t prevent them. You can’t paper over life with money.

Your wife wants to sacrifice the next 30 or 40 years to help her children. It’s a noble goal, but I don’t think it’s fair to you, individually, or to you both. Still, her instinct is rooted in her past. She watched her parents’ estate evaporate and wants the kids to be left with something. OK, a good estate attorney can plan for that.

What you can’t plan for is your own health and strength as you age. You’re both nearing 60, the age when things start to happen: Friends and family get sick and die; you or your spouse might have an injury or health issue that makes you stop for a while; you might need to use your money to fix-up your home so you can age in place.

Money can buy a lot of things, but it can’t buy good health or more time. Right now, you have both. You should work with that financial planner to talk through how much you can safely spend so you never become a financial burden to your kids (which is a wonderful legacy), and also work out how much you can give them now, while still leaving them something after you’re gone.

Please keep questions short (<150 words), and don’t submit the same question to multiple columns. We are unable to edit or remove questions after publication. Use pseudonyms to maintain anonymity. Your submission may be used in other Slate advice columns and may be edited for publication.

Dear Pay Dirt,

I bought a home five years ago with my partner. I used my money from the sale of another home for the down payment and earnest money. We opened a home equity line of credit (HELOC) a couple years ago to build him a shop/man cave. His father died last year, and we agreed that the estate money would go to paying off the HELOC. He reneged on that and said I have no rights to that money.

We are now splitting up and going to sell the house. He wants to split it down the middle.

I agree to that. However, I want my initial investment back, especially because he reneged on the HELOC pay-down. Where do we sit with this? I want to be fair but I also want my investment back.

—Dealing With a Real Winner Here

Dear Dealing with a Real Winner Here,

There are two questions I need you to answer: Were you married when you bought the house and how is the title held? The answers to your questions turn on those.

If you were married when you bought the property, the state in which you live will govern how the funds will be distributed in a divorce. In a community property state, your down payment may still be separate property, but only if you can trace it and didn’t commingle the funds in a joint account. In an equitable distribution state, a judge would weigh each spouse’s contribution. A documented down payment from a prior home sale would be your contribution versus a joint contribution.

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If you weren’t married, then you need to look at your deed. If you hold the title as joint tenants with rights of survivorship, then the sales proceeds would likely be split 50/50. Tenants in common could hold unequal shares. If you put down all of the money, then you might have owned a bigger share of the property. Did you and your partner have a partnership agreement? Often, attorneys will recommend that unmarried partners draft a partnership agreement that covers the purchase of a major asset like a house, boat or vehicle. This agreement would cover who put in what funds, what happens if one partner wants to sell, and how the funds would be split upon the sale of the property.

About his inheritance: Unless he commingled the funds in a joint account, those dollars are his alone. You have no right to them, even if he promised to use them to pay off the property. The attorney can guide you further, but here’s something you should know: Any debt, including the home equity line of credit (HELOC) and any mortgage on the property, plus all the costs of sale will get paid off from the closing proceeds before the funds are divided between you two.

You should try to find all the documentation related to the purchase of this property and the sale of the property you owned on your own. Take these to a real estate attorney and discuss the situation. See what options are available to you and how much of the down payment and HELOC funds the attorney thinks you’ll be able to salvage.

—Ilyce

Classic Prudie

I am in a relationship with someone who is distantly related to me. We are something like third cousins. We did not grow up together, met as adults, and were not “set up” or “arranged” by our families. These types of relationships are common and accepted in our family’s culture (as in many cultures), but we both grew up as second-generation Americans and are well aware that there is a lot of disgust associated with cousin relationships in this country, especially in the region where we live. Though we are not ashamed of our relationship, we don’t want to deal with the judgment of people who find it gross. How do we answer the inevitable question from friends and acquaintances about how we met, when the truth is it was at a family gathering, because we are technically family?

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