I looked into the EmailValidator class supplied with Seam 1.2.1, and its different from that found in SVN. So I found the culprit, it doesn't consider valid a String with value ''. And apparently this is the value that gets saved into the bean: Java code in Home.update(): System.out.println( "###Email: '" + getInstance().getContact().getEmail()+ "'" ); | System.out.println( "###Email validator: '" + eVal.isValid( getInstance().getContact().getEmail() )+ "'" ); And in the log: 2007-06-22 18:57:47,549 INFO [STDOUT] ###Email: '' | 2007-06-22 18:57:47,549 INFO [STDOUT] ###Email validator: 'false' The vestion in SVN treats that case as well. I'm also eager to find when the similar problem in the PatternValidator will be solved. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4056938#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...