Well, forget it. There's another problem. That "complex" validation would work well on an existing person that you edit. But when you create a new person all its properties are null. And when you fill in the fields in a form and click save, then the persons properties are still null during validation (phase 3). They get their concrete values later, in phase 4 (update model values). And, alas, you cannot compare something to null. So this is a killer for the idea of validators that should know "more" than just one field. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=3968599#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...