Best Practice Memory Question Regarding Functions that Return Object References

If I have a function that returns an object reference, such as this...

Sub GetRef()
    MsgBox ObjRef.Name
End Sub

Function ObjRef() as Object
    Set ObjRef = MyObj
End Function

What happens to that allocated memory space when the calling routine terminates?  Is it automatically destroyed?  Is it better to do something like this?

Sub GetRef()
    Dim OR as Object
    Set OR = ObjRef()
    MsgBox OR.Name
    Set OR = Nothing
End Sub

Mike