Uni-directional one-to-many relationship with Code First

Question

I have a one-to-many uni-directional relationship between Contact and Phone defined like this:

class Contact {
    int ContactId {get; set}
    ICollection<Phone> Phones {get; set}
}
class Phone {
    int PhoneId {get; set;}
    string PhoneNumber {get; set;}
}

Now in the domain layer, i try to do the following:

someContact.Phones.Remove(somePhone);

and when i try to call context.SaveChanges() i get an exception because the relationship is defined as Required (eg. a phone cannot exist without a contact).
How can i solve this without using a foreign key or a navigation property in Phone and without the need to call DbSet<Phone>.Remove(Phone) before calling SaveChanges() ?

Answer 1

You basically answered your own question, as the two things you describe are separate:

1. Unlinking the object
2. Deleting the object

There may be a clever way for EF to do this, but others have asked the same question and been presented with the answer you alluded to:

e.g. EF 4.1: Removing child object from collection does not delete it - why?