Your spouse needs her own eligibility and admissibility assessment within the family process; your vetting does not automatically establish hers. Each joining eligible spouse or unmarried child under 21 adds US$15,000 and a US$1 million gift. Follow the actual family filing and interview instructions rather than assuming an identical separate procedure for every person. Divide the work by applicant. Your spouse answers her own admissibility questions, attends her own interview and signs her own declarations; nothing you clear transfers across to her. Where a child is approaching twenty-one, responsibility for tracking that date is yours, and nobody at the agency will raise it for you.
Deciding between adding her now and adding her after admission
Initial inclusion is officially recommended for program benefits, but it does not guarantee a joint appointment or identical outcome. Ask how including the spouse now affects the current file and what a later step would require. The relationship, eligibility, charges and visa availability still need review.
Do not presume either that later inclusion is unavailable or that its timeline is necessarily longer in every case. Decide the inclusion question on what each choice requires of whom, then check that requirement against the actual instructions. Ask which additional charges each joining person triggers, what each must attend in person, and which documents only that person can obtain.
A plan assuming one appointment for the household, where the instructions contemplate individual steps, produces a scramble at precisely the wrong moment.