Hardship Withdrawal Beneficiary Expenses

[DTH]

I had an interesting question from a client today on the new PPA rule where a participant can request a hardship for a designated beneficiary.

The participant wants to designate two primary beneficiaries to get his death benefit. He want to designate 99% of his death benefit to his spouse and, with spouse consent, he wants to designate 1% to his son-in-law. Hw wants to do this to be able to gat a hardship distribution out of the plan to help pay his son-in-law's medical bills.

IRS Notice 2007-07, III Section 826 of PPA '06 defines a primary beneficiary as an individual who is named as a beneficiary under the plan and has an unconditional right to all "or a portion" of the participant's account balance under the plan upon the death of a participant.

While it does not appear to be kosher, it looks like this can be done.

Any opinions??

Thanks.

[Belgarath]

In the absence of further guidance, it does appear that this can be done.