>It's more code to write but it's not necessarily a lot of it. At most, 3 extra lines, to determine whether the object you're expecting to find is indeed instantiated, and if it isn't, instantiate it.

And the release code. ;) The real problem was my initial assumption I'd have to duplicate all the child object function calls on the higher level business object(s). With _access, I can just refer to the child object whether it's present or not.