When the tranny went out in my '96 windstar (I bought it 3 years old, off lease and it already had a trailer hitch), I did a LOT of reading.
Lots of posts about rebuilt trannys going out just outside their warranty period......12 months or 12K miles.
I bit the bullet at got a FORD remanufactured tranny, which had all the updates and came with a better waranty.
I drove the vehicle for another 9-10 years, putting over 120K miles on the replacement tranny without issue.
I understand that the current warranty on the FORD unit is 3 years or 75K miles.
In my case, I planned to keep the vehicle for a long time.
Some other things that I did, I went to doing yearly transmission fluid exchanges (cooler line fluid exchange, replacing all the fluid) and removing the pan and changing the filter every other year.
I had been having the fluid and filter changed at the dealership every 30K miles before.
I also installed a magnefine inline fluid filter in the cooler line and installed a auxillary transmission fluid cooler.
Additional things that you can do that will help your transmission.
Verify that your radiator fans are running when you have your A/C on and your vehicle is not moving.......
If they are not running (and it is not below freezing outside), then you may have a broken radiator fan low speed dropping resistor.
Then, in hot weather, when you are in stop and go traffic, which is particularly hard on transmissions, I would turn the A/C on.
This keeps the radiator fans running unless you are moving fast enough to keep air moving through the radiator......
The radiator fans keep air moving through the radiator, which keeps the transmission MUCH cooler.
Even if you don't have an auxillary transmission cooler, the in-radiator transmission fluid cooler will still be able to work much better.