All families are made up of individuals who live together in relatively stable intimate groups with the ostensible purpose of supporting and caring for each other. Family members develop their own rules and boundaries, spoken and unspoken, about the ways that they will behave with each other, cohabit, be intimate, support and care for each other. Each familys' rules and boundaries are unique and change over time to reflect modifications in membership. The evolving needs of its members and the realities the outer world places on the family, such as schedules, finances, etc. Most of the time changes in the family system are gradual and evolving, but some events force cataclysmic upheaval in the system.
Divorce is usually such an event.
When there is an impasse, any move by anyone, family member, attorney, spouse, is met with a counter move resulting in no forward progress. The impasse creates a system of its own, with its own membership, rules and boundaries. An impasse at any one of the levels will affect the entire system, and and how each individual member responds will affect all members, especially the child. The children themselves are members in both the changing family system and in the developing broader divorce impasse system. As a member of the family system, a child is attached legally, emotionally and psychologically to each of his parents.