You could form a Joint Venture Specific LLC and have a good real estate attorney draft an iron-clad Operating Agreement to minimize your risks, limit liability, and protect your personal assets all at once.

Get a (joint?)

Trust me I am in a joint unit now and over half the org had a cow when we did away with it.

If there is a dispute about who is entitled to the EMD -- which sounds like the case here -- the escrow agent (often the title company) will wait for joint instructions from the parties. 

.- We contribute the asset to a joint LLC that we createScenario #2:- He takes out a loan and buys the building for his own LLC.- He then sells me a portion of the LLC for $500K.I see some pros and cons to both scenarios, but I mainly want to make sure that I follow the established process.  

I'm an American (Minneapolis, Minnesota MN)The Intended DealAlfonso and I want to JV (Joint venture) a houseflip together.

Is it possible to form a joint venture or other form of non-entity partnership to make this work?

Everyone we have networked with says we must have skin in the game to do any kind of joint ventures/learn from them or even join a team, which we would love to do, however we basically gave our life savings to a family member to deal with a health battle.

. ($500K if you're married and filing jointly.)

@Geoff Cavender All the answers you are looking for are already here on BP - you should read these:How to Effectively Conduct Joint Venture Agreements as a Real Estate Investorhow-do-i-properly-construct-a-purchase-with-a-partnershipcreate-an-llc-for-first-partnership-best-way-to-do-sotaking-on-partner-s-and-limiting-our-liabilitesIf you still have unanswered questions after that, you need specialized help - talk with @Scott Smith.