>The COM EXE cannot access the properties, methods, etc of the parent because they run in different memory space.

Sure it can. Precisely because it is a COM object and COM supports accessing
methods and properties across all COM boundaries including over remote
machines.

If you pass a ref to another object that object is fully functional.

The problem Sylvain is seeing is not related to the object reference
but to the way he's trying to get at the property, which is more like
using events. Assign methods won't fire over COM at least not when you're
going the indirect route - meaning you never instantiated the original
object as a COM object - VFP is simply (well, actually not so simply)
marshalling a non-COM object as a COM object. In this process is where
the Assign problem occurs.

The concept needs to be put on its head using client pull rather
than server push. The server should set a value on its own members
to be retrieved by the client which has a reference to the server.
That way you can bypass the circular references altogether.