This is my take on isolating validations from ActiveRecord models, inspired by Corey Haines' gist here: https://gist.github.com/coreyhaines/3305349
The main desires are putting validation responsibility into their own object, reducing the bloat of god classes, and easing validation concerns from tests which should not care about them, particularly when validations are quite complex.
This method relies upon inclusion of the ValidationService module within an ActiveRecord class. The model will invoke its validator automatically while saving provided there is a validator that follows the appropriate naming convention.
In order to perform tests that don't concern themselves with validation logic that you desired to be unencumbered by validation, you have two options. One is to instantiate with a NilValidator: Account.new(validation_service: NilValidator)
Alternatively you can monkey-patch the validating class at the top of your test file: