well, first off.... you shouldn't have parent-constrained the hand to the locator. I think what's usually done is point-constrain a control (to which the ik handle is either a child of or constrained to) to a locator. Making the locator a child of the door is probably fine, although your animation might end up wierd (because effectively the door is pulling the charachter, and not the other way around). Oh, and if you use the menu, instead of the shelf button, you can have the constraint start with a value of 0, instead of 1.