A powerful land trust document carries more weight than just a simple trust. 

If there are mixed uses, residential and as an income property, the weight to value will be given to the greatest use, if a vocational unit is only rented 3 months of the year, it would be prudent to look at the residential aspect being weighted at 75% and the rental aspect at 25%, but even doing this adjustments will be considered.

Separate out any metals, other appliances and semi-decent stuff to save dumpster space and weight and put them by the curb, snap a pic and put up a Curb Alert on Craigslist under Free Stuff.

One was living in the house for free, wouldn't do any upkeep or pay taxes.

So the question becomes more about how much weight does one give to cash flow and how much weight to appreciation. i am 68 years old been in the game a long time been thru lots of up and down markets…………I started giving greater weight to cash flow when I was 60 and left the SF Bay Area and my brokerage business to move to Greenville SC. 

But from what I'm finding out is that the Secured Promissory Note doesn't carry much weight, so I don't know.  

Additionally, make sure the agreement with her is in writing and details any requirements for upkeep. 

How would I go about setting up a slush fund for accessing funds to pay for repairs/upgrades or simply bills in order to upkeep/run the property?  

lol   I am grateful that a year and a half ago we sold our dream home that I had designed and was the general contractor to build and downsized into a rental that we had done a 1031 exchange 3 years prior in anticipation of being empty nesters, no longer needing the space and not being up for all the up keep any longer either. 

Most properties are using prepaid cards for laundry, leasing / or lease to own, machines from laundry company and then the upkeep is their problem.