Ownership does not establish work authorization. Assess the spouse’s actual status and intended activity.
Check permission independently
Qualifying E spouses may work incident to appropriate status with evidence. A pending case or share certificate does not itself provide that status.
A new distribution business rarely pays the family properly in its first two years, which makes the spouse's employment authorization a practical foundation rather than a footnote. A spouse's outside job offer may help household planning, but it does not establish the investor's treaty nationality, committed capital, control or the enterprise's non-marginality. A household in which the spouse expects independent employment should be analysed from the actual proposal, not from an abbreviated label in an email or a planning spreadsheet. Unmarried children under 21 accompanying on E-2 dependent status do not receive employment authorization, which is a separate question from their ability to attend school. Build a dated review file around each person's passport, relationship evidence, status plans, school plans, and separate employment facts. The dependent spouse is employment-authorised by virtue of that status, so a spouse who wants outside work is free to take it, subject to whatever licensing the occupation requires. Plan the business opening around actual work authorization, and keep the household’s travel arrangements flexible enough to accommodate different outcomes or dates.