Problem : Relation between ManualCheck & ManualCheckDistribution is one to many, ManualCheckDistribution to ManualCheckDistributionDetail is one to many. When I tried to invoke delete Child), hibernate is throwing below exception. Though we are trying to delete entity, error message talks about persisting an entity. javax.persistence.EntityNotFoundException: deleted entity passed to persist: [com.adp.payroll.model.payroll.manualcheck.ManualCheckDistribution#] Guess hibernate will invoke persist of Parent entity after removing child entity to synchronize its state with database. Parent entity Set/Collection of child entities has still a reference to Child entity which was deleted, because we have not refreshed Set/Collection of child entities in Parent entity. When Hibernate calls persist on Parent to synchronize we get the above exception. Soution : Before you invoke delete(Child), remove the child entity refernce from the Set/Collection of child entities in Parent entity Code snippet: public void deleteManualCheckDistribution(PayrollAgreementId payrollAgreementId, String payNumber, int distNumber )throws PayrollServiceException { ManualCheckDistribution checkDist = getManualCheckDistribution(payrollAgreementId, payNumber, distNumber); ManualCheck mc = checkDist.getManualCheck(); Set distList = mc.getManualCheckDistributions(); distList.remove(checkDist); getEm().remove(checkDist); } Thanks, Bathula. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4082414#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...