An eligible spouse and unmarried children under 21 may seek L-2 status. A qualifying L spouse is employment-authorized incident to status, but dependent children do not receive work authorization simply through L-2 status.
Check each family member's status and plans individually
Record citizenship, relationship evidence, age, and the intended arrival date for each person. Verify the spouse's actual documentation of employment authorization rather than assuming an EAD is always required or is the only acceptable form of evidence. Keep any child's study plans and age-related questions distinct from the spouse's employment question.
Of the routes described on this site, L-1 treats an accompanying spouse most generously, and employers ordinarily rely on the annotated Form I-94 issued on admission when completing onboarding paperwork. The permission comes from the status itself, so the spouse is not tied to the transferring company, to a particular employer or to a particular occupation, and does not depend on anyone's goodwill to keep working. Where the spouse holds a professional registration or an independent route of their own, raise it in the same conversation, since an independent basis sometimes arrives sooner than the dependent one and changes the plan entirely.