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Nope! You have to do it like in the lower picture. And while the order "should" not matter, it's after all the intend of using reference counts to not allow a client to dispose an object before all other clients have closed it too, I try to always first close the sub objects and then the owner of them (just as you did). There are assemblies and especially ActiveX automation servers out there who don't properly do ref counting and may spuriously crash if you don't do it in the right order.