@Attribute(.unique) working as intended, kind of

I have a model that has a unique property, e.g.:

@Model
final class UserWord
   @Attribute(.unique)
   let word: String
   let partOfSpeech: PartOfSpeech
   let metaData: ...

At the end of the init I have this:

init(...) { 
   if partOfSpeech == .verb { 
       metaData = fetchMeta()
   }
}

This works fine when a word is newly created and saved. But let's say there's a unique conflict and a user tries to save a new entry with the same word. Apparently this init still fires and fetchMeta edits the existing entry which gives me the error:

CoreData: error: Mutating a managed object 0xb890d8167c911ade <x-coredata://4C75194F-D923-477F-BB22-ACBDECCD7530/UserWord/p2> (0x600002170af0) after it has been removed from its context.

I think the solution here is to do some manual checking of the modelContext before saving. Would love to hear other's thoughts.