Knowing that breaking the news of a physical handicap diagnosis has impacts both on the person with the handicap and on his or her relatives, many studies researched what were the impacts of that news on the latter. Nevertheless, the stages these relatives go through to adapt to the new situation are not as well known as the stages the person experiences him- or herself. A review of the literature enabled us to identify two processes the relatives of a person with a physical handicap go through. The first one is chronological and has four stages : before the news, the shock after the news, the rehabilitation period and after the rehabilitation. The second is dynamic, systemic and changes with time ; it is the grieving process. Many outcomes are possible after theses processes ; it can be resilient, homeostatic, maladaptive or dysfunctional. The identification of these processes enables us to suggest some intervention techniques.