You do as you originally said - that is, use find() to load in the entity and fill in that attached entity with the data coming in from that detached pojo. There isn't much you can do because the detached pojo you are getting is half-full (i.e. missing that transient data). It has some data but not all of it; but the JPA container doesn't know what is "right" and what is "wrong" with respect to the contents of your detached pojo (since a null collection is clearly a valid thing to have - the container doesn't know if that's what you really want or not). The merge(), therefore, is going to assume the detached pojo getting merged is "full" - that is, it has the correct state for the entire entity. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4016861#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...