Each dependent needs a valid travel document, and TD eligibility depends on being a spouse or an unmarried child under twenty-one. Steps vary by nationality. A child approaching twenty-one is a timing question worth raising with counsel before plans are fixed. Where a household holds passports from different countries, treat each person as a separate file with its own timeline and its own expiry date. A child's age on the day of the request, not on the day the plan was drawn up, is generally what the under-twenty-one condition is measured against.
Review each person's documents separately
Do not assume the family moves as a single file. A dependent holding a different citizenship from the principal may need a visa where the principal does not. Renew the shortest-dated passport first and confirm each person's own steps.
Remember that TD permits study but does not authorize employment, so a spouse's work plans need separate advice regardless of documents. The failure here is a household planned as one unit and documented as one document. A spouse renews on time, a child's book is overlooked, and the family's departure moves for a reason unconnected to the professional's own file.
Build a single table listing each person, their citizenship, their document expiry and the step their nationality requires; review it when the offer is accepted, not when travel is booked. A dependent's paperwork is the cheapest thing to fix early and among the most disruptive to fix late.