>What benefits of subclassing base controls if I am not intending to extend their functionality or build an extensive framework.

You may not want to be extending them now, but what if in a week, you find you need every one of teh 200 text box controls in your app to do sometype of security first. If you used the same "base" class (A subclass of the VFP Base classes) you don't have much work to do, otherwise....