yes, it unfortunately looks like going to court to get a financial guardianship set up is the only path. it's interesting in that there were several accounts defined this way and they all simply set up a UTMA custodial account and boom, done. This one however is a 401K w/ NetBenefits and they won't do anything without a "court document stating that I am the financial guardian" of my own kid. This despite the fact that Texas (we're in Texas) family code 151.001 specifically states that the child's parent is by default the financial custodian of the child.
Root problem of setting up the guardianship is that the account value is small-ish. Figure it will cost a somewhat significant part of the asset to execute. Here we're really only talking 2 years until we gain access so it might actually be cheaper to pay the penalty for late payment of the RMDs.
