I'm way too cool for JSF validator tags ;) Just to see how the overriding would work, afer you override the class how would you get Seam to use it everytime I refer to "identity" as opposed to the current Identity? I could change the line in components.xml bundled with the Seam JARs to the following, but I'm sure there's a way to do this without messing with the Seam JARs. (Seam must be extensible, right?) <factory scope="stateless" auto-create="true" name="identity" value="#{myIdentitySubclass}"/> View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4010562#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...