Never mind; I just solved my problem. Here's the method I wrote for my subclass to do the same thing as [value valueForKey:@"observedObject"]

-(NSManagedObject *)observedObject { NSManagedObjectID *objID = [self objectID]; NSManagedObjectContext *moc = [self managedObjectContext]; id tmpObject = [moc objectWithID:objID]; return tmpObject; }