>Any help extremely appreciated

Rob, sorry to jump in, but I have a question. Have you looked at the isolation level REPEATABLE READ?

Just wondering if that would accomplish the same thing. You can set the isolation level for the transaction to REPEATABLE READ. If the first SELECT is successful, then you should be able to issue the subsequent UPDATE statement in the transaction.

Also...you'll want to wrap this inside a TRY/CATCH block, in case you can't get a lock on the SELECT.

Not saying your initial code won't work (maybe a second question, if it's not working for you, what behavior were you getting?). Just curious if you had looked at the REPEATABLE READ isolation level.