It builds useful skills, teaches you about home ownership (so you learn what clients look at), and generates wealth.

Combing through the tax assessment files, finding the chain of ownership, determining what municipal liens might be attached and scouring Statutes relating to tax foreclosure laws in my state/county (did I mention that I am quite adept at research).

Without profit sharing or some other ownership incentive, employer/employee relationship creates too much dependency in both directions.  

That would leave the existing mortgage in place and transfer Title so the UST would be your problem.

In the past couple years during their divorce she had been transferring the mortgage payment to the ex-husband to make the payments...you can see where I’m goi with this...he has recently stopped making the payments and now they’ve defaulted on the mortgage.

The law here is that if the property is sold after >10 years' ownership, there is no tax on the capital gains.

If you keep buying properties in your personal name, getting a mortgage, then transferring Title, its starts looking like an alter-ego in my layman's opinion. 

Have you looked at setting up a trust and transferring it to the trust?

The deposit is ALWAYS property of the tenant and ALWAYS transfers from the Seller to the Buyer.

They basically hold the building liable rather than the owner and that liability transfers from owner to owner until someone deleads it and breaks the chain.