From 88882cd2d850fe63104008cb30135196304f2068 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Andrea Boriero <andrea@hibernate.org>
Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2024 14:13:57 +0200
Subject: [PATCH] HHH-18289  with  leads to HibernateException: A collection
 with cascade= was no longer referenced by the owning entity instance

---
 .../src/main/java/org/hibernate/type/CollectionType.java   | 7 ++++++-
 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/hibernate-core/src/main/java/org/hibernate/type/CollectionType.java b/hibernate-core/src/main/java/org/hibernate/type/CollectionType.java
index ca6c82e4fa..b911118ee1 100644
--- a/hibernate-core/src/main/java/org/hibernate/type/CollectionType.java
+++ b/hibernate-core/src/main/java/org/hibernate/type/CollectionType.java
@@ -654,7 +654,12 @@ public abstract class CollectionType extends AbstractType implements Association
 			final Object owner,
 			final Map<Object, Object> copyCache) throws HibernateException {
 		if ( original == null ) {
-			return null;
+			if ( target == null  ) {
+				return target;
+			}
+			final Collection collection = (Collection) target;
+			collection.clear();
+			return collection;
 		}
 		if ( !Hibernate.isInitialized( original ) ) {
 			if ( ( (PersistentCollection<?>) original ).hasQueuedOperations() ) {