I was wrong in saying eventId param is passed.. It was passed initially during the creation of the instance but not when it was being saved.. I missed this little detail at 4am.. I have found that the following is a solution, as documented in chapter 10.2 @Factory("event") public Event initEvent() { return getInstance(); } protected Event createInstance() { Event event = new Event(); Event parent = getEntityManager().find(Event.class, Long.valueOf(parentId)); event.setParent(parent); return event; } View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4033572#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...