Movie Clip with Button nightmare

Greetings all,

I have been working on this for a while now and would appreciate any help from you guys.

I have a drop down tab menu that I have animated this tab to appear to be coming out from off stage to all apear when moused over. I have this part ready and now I want to put some buttons inside the tab so when they come to a stop the user can select 3 btn to continue or exit or whatever.

I read not to make “actual” btn symbols for this but to fake it with invisible btns. I have done this and when I view my work I am able to make this work, but now the invisible rectangle for the hit state is actually punching out the movie clip Rollover/RollOut areas. Picture a hole in the movie clip area now. So if I go into the clip RollOver area I will soon hit the rectangle that will rollout and then hit the top of the rectangle making it rollover and then to the top of the movie clip instance to rollout.

How can make the invisible btn transparent as in allow the area to be used for its repsected btn hit area and not interfer with movie clip RollOver/RollOut area. I have them seperate in 2 layers in the main timeline layer.

Thx if anyone can help!

los