The booklet offers suggestions for parents concerned with providing lifetime protection for a child with mental retardation. Emphasis is placed on the interrelationship between the child's prospective needs of social and/or economic supports and the formal mechanisms which can be brought to bear on them. Four major topics are addressed: (1) guardianship (conservatorship, collective guardianship); (2) wills, trusts, and general estate planning (four basic estate plans, trustee selection, common trusts, importance of wills); (3) insurance benefits (the ARC plans, insurance for children, insurance planning); and (4) government benefits (the role of state government, federal programs of income support and health care coverage, interrelationship of government benefits and private income, Social Security benefits for adults, Medicare, Medicaid, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and state utilizations of combinations of SSI and Medicaid options as they affect care of the disabled in the community). A list of recommended reading for parents and their attorneys concludes the booklet. (CL)