Craig, yes,  the decision is to only take on active partners who will take a role and hole duties, so it will by a Joint Venture and not a syndication.  

I did not pay penalty’s or crazy taxes because I took my time and found the loop holes and worked with professionals to protect myself.

Find your weaknesses and start plugging those holes.

Am I putting enough sweat equity in to compensate for the lack of monetary contribution upfront or is that a fair partnership?

Moved a few places - went back to what I called home (Wichita) then again wanting to make changes we left our fully remodeled house we never had the pleasure of enjoying as it was under remodel when we left and moved to a complete shxt hole that is dated back to the 70s was dirty and full of bugs and with some land that was a complete overgrown jungle - we could have bought a nicer house but I wanted to keep it very affordable and lower our stress  --- the house was also 2.5 hours away from family to pursue our business purchase. 

Stick to the introduction and be the good guy hoping there's some monetary thanks in the offing.

We currently live in Germany for husband's W-2 job,  here in the industrial steel-capital of Germany (which had the holy CRAP bombed out of it in WWII),  rarely does anyone ever build a house, or dig a hole for ANY reason, without finding a bomb.  

I've gone deep down this rabbit hole before. 

Be certain of what you're looking for before you dig into this site or you can find yourself in a black hole of data!  

That's how investors tend to dig themselves into a hole.