  We investigate the impact between the gas stream from the inner Lagrangian
point and the accretion disk in interacting binaries, using three dimensional
Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics simulations. We find that a significant fraction
of the stream material can ricochet off the disk edge and overflow towards
smaller radii, and that this generates pronounced non-axisymmetric structure in
the absorption column towards the central object. We discuss the implications
of our results for observations and time-dependent models of low-mass X-ray
binaries, cataclysmic variables and supersoft X-ray sources.
