Persistant Permissions Problems

I cannot seem to get a handle on the permissions thing… now that correcting permissions is supposed to be not necessary …
After migrating files to a new system and placing these files in the Home > Documents
and modifying the folder to have the home user as owner, > read-write > apply to enclosed items
and running permissions repair from command-line (Terminal)
I still cannot get consistent access to these files.
Any advice on how to finally get past this?

You seem to be saying that your ~/Documents folder was not owned by the home user after migration. That would seem to be impossible unless you followed some strange way of accomplishing the migration. Why did you have to “place” these files in ~/Documents? They should have already been there if they were in that location previously. And what macOSs did you migrate from and to?

@alvarnell Sounds as if he hasn’t used Migration Assistant, but moved files manually instead. @jmhbpc may want to clarify.

Problem system mainly MacOS Mojave, but because Mojave had been so problematic for an older system that I downgraded this particular computer back to High Sierra.

In this case yes, I had forgotten some files/folders. So needed to “migrate” manually.
So, I guess my main question relates to why when proceeding with manual
process, of adding files and folders then correcting permissions in the get-info pane … the process consistently fails.
Ex. Folder > Get Info > unlock > make Me owner > apply to enclosed files (which should apple to all of the files and folders inside the target folder) > clicking OK at the prompt
Restarting etc.
Generally does not work … the first time. And when things seem settled, the files can revert to an uncorrected state

If I may indulge, a second issue is often the case that volumes checked with “ignore permissions” often require numerous resets as above, … but I digress
And maybe a later discussion to include the fetching user which cannot be deleted from the queue of a folder’s permissions set