I have an MDI child form which contains a menu strip, and an MDI parent
also containing a menu strip. When I open the child form, the menus
merge correctly. However, when my child form contains a usercontrol
with its own menu strip, the menustrip from the usercontrol gets merged
with the MDI parent menu, and I lose the menus from the child form.

Is there anyway that I can get all three menus to merge together
correctly? As I would like to create a form template containing
standard options (which may or may not be used as an MDI child), user
controls with specific options and the MDI parent with options relating
to that.

Any ideas/tips would be great as I've tried most options, and so far
have found no way of doing what I want.

What if you make the Menu Strip contained by the User Control publicly accessible?