stepdad, 
Here's something you might try, it's worked for me, but it involves hacking the pp2 file. First you have to give your parent an individual name, like OakTree or what ever. Then pose your smart prop and save it as usual. 

Now open the .pp2 file and locate the "smart parent" command line you'll probably see something like "smartparent prop:1" (I'm not positive of the convention for a prop parented to a prop so I'm guessing here). Replace this witl "smartparent OakTree" or simialr and resave the pp2.
In the case of a smart prop parented to a figuer you'll see somthing for example like "smartparent rHand:1" change the ":1" to the figure name with no number, an examplewould be "smartparent rHand:Victoria4".

when loading the files in Poser load the Parent object first then the smart prop, then the second parent object and the smart prop for it, etc.

I pickup the idea of using figure names from this site, where it's explained better than I can:

http://www.rbtwhiz.com/rbtwhiz_ERC.html#CT

Seems if you leave the number off of the name Poser will add it in the order it;s loaded, at least internally. 

mike