The spouse’s permission depends on individual status. A qualifying E spouse is employment-authorized incident to status, while ownership or a customer contract alone does not establish authorization.
Identify the actual family role
Describe the work, location and intended status, and verify the relevant documentation. Children’s study and work questions remain separate. Do not assume every household member can provide services because the principal investor has an enterprise. The dependent categories cover a qualifying spouse and unmarried children under 21. Check each person’s relationship, age and period of authorized stay rather than extending a permission from another household member.
Household arrival plans made before a business opens are made with the least information anyone involved will ever have, so agree a date some months out at which the plan is revisited against actual trading, and shape the intervening commitments accordingly. Because the category asks whether treaty-country nationals own at least half the enterprise, and whether the investor genuinely develops and directs it, shares or voting rights placed in a relative's name can move the answer to a question nobody meant to open. Where a family member will run the source business, agree what they are being asked to do and for how long, and whether their own plans change as a result, since an informal arrangement made quickly tends to be revisited unhappily.