When a forget/rollback is executed after a prepare the instance has already been removed from the refs. The reference should be held so that it can added back to the refs.

The least evasive solution is to not invoke the applyPostCreate() in the prepare. This will require examination of all implementations to make sure values are set, but references are not removed in this phase.

The other option would be to add a commit step only invoked from the commit phase where references could be removed.