I frequently use COM, and I've written an add_ref() and release() so that I can use my COM objects with boost::intrusive_ptr. However, one generally obtains these pointers through a library call that accepts a T** or a void**, and returns a pointer that's already been AddRef'd the first time. Normally it would go something like this: template<typename T> d3d_ptr<T> take_ptr(T* t) { return d3d_ptr<T>(t, false); } ID3DXFont* pFont = NULL; D3DXCreateFontIndirect(m_pDeviceObject, &fontDesc, &pFont); m_spFont = take_ptr(pFont); To remove these extra 2 lines I wrote the following class / function: template<typename T> class recv_by_addr_t { public: recv_by_addr_t(d3d_ptr<T>& r) : m_auto(r), m_raw(NULL) {} ~recv_by_addr_t() {m_auto = take_ptr(m_raw);} operator T**() { return &m_raw; } private: T* m_raw; d3d_ptr<T>& m_auto; }; template<typename T> recv_by_addr_t<T> recv_by_addr(d3d_ptr<T>& rptr) { return recv_by_addr_t<T>(rptr); } And I can now call the function like this: D3DXCreateFontIndirect(m_pDeviceObject, &fontDesc, recv_by_addr(m_spFont)); I feel like this is pretty solid, but figured I should ask the gurus :) Even in the case where the function errors out and sets the thing to NULL, the original pointer should still get correctly released. Anything wrong with this approach?