No, sorry, that was an error I introduced when I was composing the email...
here's the real code... class AssetState(meta.Model): state=meta.CharField(maxlength=128) def __repr__(self): return self.state class META: admin=meta.Admin() ordering = ['id'] class Asset(meta.Model): definition=meta.ForeignKey(AssetDefinition) state=meta.ForeignKey(AssetState,null=True,blank=True) def __repr__(self): return self.get_definition().__repr__()