Laravel 5 Eloquent ORM - Many to Many through Many to Many - laravel

Question

I'm working on a rather complex Users system that requires the ability to grant access privileges to either individuals or entire groups. For example, you could grant Jane Doe access to moderate the Message Board, or all users of the Communications Group to send emails, moderate the message board, and post events (all users assigned to the group are granted access to those privileges when added).
Rather than strictly track individual privileges for each user, I want to grant access to a feature first based on whether or not the user belongs to a group containing that privilege. If they don't, I then want to check to see if they are granted individual access (privilege_user pivot table).
Basically, I want something like this:
// 1 = Message Board Moderator
// See if any of the user's groups contain this privilege -
$hasAccess = Auth::user()->groups->privileges->contains(1);
Here is my table structure:
Users
| Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+----------------+------------------+------+-----+---------------------+----------------+
| id | int(10) unsigned | NO | PRI | NULL | auto_increment |
| username | varchar(80) | NO | | NULL | |
| email | varchar(120) | NO | | NULL | |
| first_name | varchar(20) | NO | MUL | NULL | |
| last_name | varchar(45) | NO | MUL | NULL | |
| password | varchar(140) | NO | | NULL | |
| active | tinyint(1) | NO | | NULL | |
| remember_token | varchar(100) | NO | | NULL | |
| last_login | timestamp | YES | | NULL | |
| last_login_ip | varchar(45) | YES | | NULL | |
| updated_at | timestamp | NO | | 0000-00-00 00:00:00 | |
| created_at | timestamp | NO | | 0000-00-00 00:00:00 | |
| deleted_at | timestamp | YES | | NULL | |
+----------------+------------------+------+-----+---------------------+----------------+
Groups (table: user_groups)
+-------------+------------------+------+-----+---------------------+----------------+
| Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+-------------+------------------+------+-----+---------------------+----------------+
| id | int(10) unsigned | NO | PRI | NULL | auto_increment |
| name | varchar(255) | NO | | NULL | |
| slug | varchar(255) | NO | | NULL | |
| description | text | NO | | NULL | |
| created_at | timestamp | NO | | 0000-00-00 00:00:00 | |
| updated_at | timestamp | NO | | 0000-00-00 00:00:00 | |
+-------------+------------------+------+-----+---------------------+----------------+
User Groups Pivot (table: user_user_group)
+---------------+------------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+---------------+------------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| user_id | int(10) unsigned | NO | MUL | NULL | |
| user_group_id | int(10) unsigned | NO | MUL | NULL | |
+---------------+------------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
Privileges (table: privleges)
+-------+------------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+-------+------------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| id | int(10) unsigned | NO | PRI | NULL | auto_increment |
| name | varchar(255) | NO | | NULL | |
| slug | varchar(255) | NO | | NULL | |
+-------+------------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
Privileges User Group Pivot (table: privilege_user_group)
+---------------+------------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+---------------+------------------+------+-----+---------+-------+
| privilege_id | int(10) unsigned | NO | MUL | NULL | |
| user_group_id | int(10) unsigned | NO | MUL | NULL | |
+---------------+------------------+------+-----+---------+-------+

Answer 1

Was disappointed that nobody chimed in here on SO but fortunately I was able to find some great help at Laracasts.com.
I went with Zizaco/entrust, which does exactly what I was describing. The only part lacking is answering the question "does this User have a Permission" without the user being assigned to a Group, but that is easy to accomplish with Eloquent. What entrust does do is answer the question "Does this User have access to this Permission through a Group?" And that's what I was after.