I am trying to Parent the hands of two figures to parts of the other figure's body using IK & Parent, so that when one or the other figure animates, the Parented hand moves with its assigned body part. In this case, the left hand of Figure 1 (on the left) is Parented to the shoulder of Figure 2 (on the right), and the right hand of Figure 2 is parented to the shoulder of Figure 1.

The problem I'm having is that when I change the pose of Figure 1, the head and parented shoulder of Figure 2 stay frozen in place (see picture), and the same happens to Figure 1 if I change the pose of Figure 2.

If I turn IK off, the problem resolves itself (more or less, see 2nd picture), but then I've lost the ability to further edit the animation, since turning IK on again screws up the hands. Anybody else seen this problem? Better yet, anybody solved it??  ;-)