Adjusting skeleton bone position for custom rig

[pts2k5]

I'm trying to adjust the knee and elbow joint positions of the Skyrim skeleton without having to scale the bones in Nifskope. There was orignally question as to whether this was even possible due to animations resetting bone position and location. According to a post from Saiden a while back, it's my understanding that actual skeleton bones can in fact be repositioned on xyz/rotation using a transform node, similar to how dummy parent transform nodes are used to reposition weapon nodes.

I've attempted to reposition actual skeleton bones in Nifskope for a custom rig using the above method without complete success. The adjusted skeleton appears to open properly in Nifskope with the transforms applied.  In 3ds max however, the original bone is deleted and gets replaced by the added parent transform node. I'm guessing that the skeleton integrity was somehow destroyed due to the parent transform node not being applied properly. Can anyone please confirm if transforming bones on xyz/rotation is possible without adding bones or re-working entire skeleton and animations, and if so provide the correct process? Thanks