Cakephp HABTM same model - cakephp-2.0

Question

I'm trying to figure out how to track the owners of real property. Investors specifically.
(I did spend hours researching and trying different things)
I'm using HABTM on the same model. (see below for why)
The difficulty I'm having is on the model->find. It only returns related entries if the id I'm searching for is in the first column of the relationship table.
In the entities table I have
1,Homer
2,Springfield Nuclear
3,Bart
In entities_relateds
2,1
2,3
(for the sake of argument, let's just assume that Bart grew up and went to work at the plant.
So both 1 & 3 are related to 2.)
If if do
$this->Entity->findById(2);
It looks great.
Array
(
[0] => Array
(
[Related] => Array
(
[id] => 2
[name] => Springfield Nuclear
[0] => Array
(
[id] => 1
[name] => Bart
)
[1] => Array
(
[id] => 3
[name] => Homer
)
)
)
)
However, if the values in the first row of entities_relateds are reversed...
1,2
2,3
I get
Array
(
[0] => Array
(
[Related] => Array
(
[id] => 2
[name] => Springfield Nuclear
[0] => Array
(
[id] => 3
[name] => Homer
)
)
)
)
It doesn't return the first row.
Doesn't matter if I do
$this->Entity->Related->findById(2);
It changes the array a bit, but still doesn't return the first row.
I'm wide open to alternate suggestions for how to solve this.
Thanks.
A bit more information here below.
Scenario:
It's pretty common to have people partner on deals and to own the property in either their own name, or any of several different companies. Partner A, Partner B, Company A, Company B. Any of these names could be on title, and really these are just aliases for the same 'group'.
So, I created a table called 'entities'. Each record can be either a real person, or a company. They share a lot of the same attributes, but most importantly, either type can be the legal owner of a piece of real property.
CREATE TABLE `entities` (
`id` INT(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
`name` VARCHAR(50) NULL DEFAULT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
)
The relation table:
CREATE TABLE `entities_relateds` (
`entity_id` INT(11) NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',
`related_id` INT(11) NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',
PRIMARY KEY (`entity_id`, `related_id`)
)
Model HATBM
App::uses('AppModel', 'Model');
class Entity extends AppModel {
public $hasAndBelongsToMany = array(
'Related' => array(
'className' => 'Entity',
'joinTable' => 'entities_relateds',
'foreignKey' => 'entity_id',
'associationForeignKey' => 'related_id',
'unique' => 'keepExisting'
)
);
}

Answer 1

I would recommend you to try setting the recursive of the model to 1 like:
$this->Entity->recursive = 1
and then try to do the find.
If this not works I'd give a shot to containable behavior which is even better than messing up with the recursivity of model.
If you choose to work with ContainableBehavior your find would end up like this:
$this->Entity->find('all',
array(
'conditions'=>array('id'=>2),
'contain'=>array('Related')
)
);
UPDATE 1: Added containable code.