i agree, if you have set CascadeType.ALL or CascadeType.REMOVE on the "phones" collection, then when you call person.getPhones().remove(phone) the phone will be removed from the db. if you only have CascadeType.PERSIST and/or CascadeType.MERGE, then only the "link" from person to that phone will be deleted--the phone entity will still be in the db. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4063064#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...