I think I have part of the answer: See http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&t=56357 The short answer seem to be that in a bidirectional OneToMany, you must explicitly delete the entity after removing it from the collection. However, in that post, Bill Burke seems to indicate that a "non-inverse", which I assume is a unidirectional relationship, would automatically delete the entity when it is removed from the collection. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=3970232#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...