Project Inheritance problem

[EJ Ciramella]

Hello all - I'm having a bit of trouble with three layers of pom files.
 
If I have:
pom.xml -> pom.xml -> pom.xml
 
what _should_ the parent tags look like?
 
In the top most one, I have:
 
 <groupId>lty</groupId>
 <artifactId>app</artifactId>
 <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
 <packaging>pom</packaging>
 
In the middle one, I have:
 
 <parent>
    <groupId>lty</groupId>
    <artifactId>app</artifactId>
    <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
  </parent>
    <groupId>lty</groupId>
 <artifactId>frontoffice</artifactId>
 <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
 
and at the lowest level, I have:
 
 <parent>
  <groupId>lty</groupId>
  <artifactId>frontoffice</artifactId>
  <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
 </parent>
 <artifactId>memberApp</artifactId>
 <packaging>war</packaging>
 <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
 
At the top level, I have this defined:
 
   <plugin>
    <artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
    <configuration>
        <reportsDirectory>../reportsdirectory</reportsDirectory>
     <excludes>
      <exclude>
       **/JTAManagedTransactionContextTest.java
      </exclude>
     </excludes>
     <systemProperties>
      <property>
       <name>common.properties</name>
       <value>${work.dir}/common.properties</value>
      </property>
      <property>
       <name>uprweb.properties</name>
       <value>${work.dir}/uprweb.properties</value>
      </property>
      <property>
       <name>java.util.logging.config.file</name>
       <value>${work.dir}/utils/src/main/conf/logging.properties</value>
      </property>
     </systemProperties>
    </configuration>
   </plugin>
 
But when I run, the tests in the lowest level don't get the
systemProperties for some reason (I can clearly see they aren't getting
passed along).
 
How can I fix this?