Her mother passed away about 2-3 years ago, she left no will or anything.

If we truly operated with a grain of mother f%?

Very well maintained, as it was a home that was inherited from the owners mother.

As @Travis Sperr said, you can not personally benefit from your IRA, nor can your IRA benefit from you.A prohibited person is you, your spouse, your family that is linear to you (Mother, Father, GrandParents, children).

My mother has expressed interest in partnering with me on a multi-family purchase. 

My dad was a janitor and my mother helped with the cleaning of the three apartment buildings he managed (in exchange for a rent free basement apartment this was expected to be a "family run" operation where both the husband and wife were on call 24/7 to handle emergencies). 

They have another landlord reference but it’s the girlfriends mother that’s listed.

I forgot to mention in my post, I used to save $800/mo for my house and lived with my mother.

It sounds like a primary residence that happens to have a mother-in-law apartment in the basement that can be rented out for, frankly, a little pin money.Don't really even need to get into the "don't invest with relatives you want to see in the future" part of the discussion.Jon

These people may not live up to my standards but deserve to be able to raise a family in a relatively safe environment.As an example, I bought a house with sec 8, 3 rambunctious boys and an unemployed mother.