Best plan of action to invest in real estate with your spouse?

[Gabriel Lamb]

Hello biggerpockets community! I wanted to ask the married couples, who invest together, how they keep the assets organized. Currently, I am educating myself on REI and business. Soon I would like to take the plunge. My girlfriend and I are not married and do not have any properties yet. In the next 5 years, both will become a reality though. I envision us buying a property or two before marriage, and then buying many many properties as a married couple. Any advice on how to make sure we each are rewarded appropriately for our business efforts? And not that there is any option of divorce, but how we may each keep what we work hard for in our REI? Any guidance is appreciated! Thanks guys !

[Chris Mason]

IMO, keep it fully segregated. Fannie Mae caps you at 10 financed properties. If you keep it segregated, that works out to 20 as a household (10 for you, 10 for spouse). But if you both go in on all deals together on paper, you're capped at 10 between the two of you, and then you have to start using sub-optimal financing.

If you get the primary residence in just Spouse A's name, often Spouse B can qualify for investment property financing regardless of Spouse B's day-job income, provided it cashflows and the down payment funds are seasoned in an account with Spouse B's name on it. Keep that in mind if there's the possibility that one of you might want to take a few years off for baby making/rearing purposes! 

That's my $0.02, and obviously it's mostly focused on the mortgage side of things. An estate planning lawyer and a tax professional will have their own perspective that focuses on those areas.