Assess the actual activity and the spouse’s permission to perform it in the United States. A foreign supervisor does not eliminate the work-authorization question.
Confirm status and evidence
Qualifying L spouses may work incident to appropriate status with required evidence. A pending dependent plan does not authorize the role, and children do not share that spouse permission.
For someone seeking L-2, the principal’s approved transfer does not itself grant the family member status: check the individual classification, validity dates and spouse-designated I-94 where applicable. Each dependent needs a passport valid for the intended period, evidence of the relationship such as a marriage certificate or a long-form birth certificate, and any change-of-name document that reconciles the records. Gather passports, marriage records and travel dates, then verify the documents evidencing actual L-2 status before employment begins. Where a spouse has professional qualifications, it is still worth asking whether an independent route would give the household more security than a derivative status that ends when the principal's does. A pending case confers nothing, so a spouse who is present as a visitor while USCIS holds the petition remains a visitor, and a visitor’s permitted activities are narrow. Marriage must be legally recognized for the spouse to hold derivative status at all, which is worth confirming for couples who have lived together for years without marrying.