Investing with my Retired Father

[Matt Kvalheim]

Hello everyone, I'm very interested to hear your opinions on how I should handle this situation.

I have been investing in buy/hold SFRs and 4 plexes for about 12 years now and my retired father (he's 72 years old) would like to invest in some properties with me, 50/50.  How should we best hold title to the properties?  We bought our first one for cash a few weeks ago, under my name only and we plan to refinance it after 12 months of holding.

At first I thought it would be safer if it just had my name on title, just in case a lawsuit went bad.  I'm relatively young and have time to recover financially, while my father would not.  I also thought it would be easier to refinance down the road with just my name on title.

However, now I am thinking that if something were to happen to me, my father would then have no legal rights to the property if he's not on title.

How should I best deal with this situation?  Should I quitclaim him onto title now as Joint Tenants?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts!