Unexpected behavior with association which overrides a transient property in Hibernate

Issue

• An entity hierarchy is defined as follows:

    @MappedSuperclass
    public class SuperClass implements Serializable {
        ...
        @Transient
        public RelatedEntity getRelatedEntity() {
            return relatedEntity;
        }
    }

    @Entity
    public class SubClass extends SuperClass {
        @ManyToOne(targetEntity = RelatedEntity.class, fetch = FetchType.LAZY)
        @JoinColumn(name = "AssociatedId")
        public RelatedEntity getRelatedEntity() {
            return super.getRelatedEntity();
        }
    }

    @Entity
    public class RelatedEntity {
        ...
    }

• Sometimes the association is found to be null. Other times it is populated automatically (e.g. when loading instances of the subclass using a query).