The spouse is employment-authorized incident to dependent status and may work for any employer. Children may attend school but may not work, and derivative status ends at twenty-one.
Use the spousal permission deliberately
This is a genuine advantage of the transfer routes over the professional ones, and it is worth planning around. A spouse may take employment anywhere, including work unrelated to the family business, which often stabilises a household's income during a first year when the new operation is consuming cash rather than producing it. Keep evidence of status current, because employers will ask. Professional licensing is unaffected by the rule, so a spouse in a regulated occupation still faces the state's own process and should begin it early. Children may study at every level and may not work at all. Their derivative status ends at twenty-one, and where a family expects to remain beyond the seven-year limit on this category, both that limit and the children's ages belong on the same calendar.
Hypothetical example: the spouse of a transferee is a custom-guitar maker who plans to accept commissions from several U.S. music shops. The first review should separate immigration status, evidence of the marriage, professional licensing if any, and the practical date on which work may begin. The marriage certificate and unexpired admission record settle the derivative relationship and status; a client's purchase order does not. Put the family's planned work, school, and travel dates on one calendar with the principal's expiration date and the children's ages. A common failure is assuming that a dependent child's study plan resolves later status questions. It does not, so the household should plan for the end of derivative eligibility well before a child reaches twenty-one and reassess the transfer strategy if that date is close.