The sobering fact of family law is that to be in the business of orchestrating

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Part IV
Advanced Applications of Theory to Family Law Practice
For example, it makes sense that attainment of Formal Oper-
ations might be used as a minimum cognitive threshold.
23
How-
ever, there is no necessary relationship between the ability to
consider the hypothetical outcomes associated with one’s choices
and the socioemotional capacity to cope with those outcomes
or the verbal capacity to express these complexities. In fact,
the suggestion that cognitive development normatively precedes
socioemotional development in mid- to late adolescence (the
“maturity gap” that Galambos, Turner and Tilton-Weaver [2005]
discuss; see chapter 7) speaks strongly against establishing exclu-
sively cognitive criteria and in favor of establishing at least socioe-
motional criteria, as well.