Have material changes reviewed rather than assuming an earlier approval settles the current circumstances. Check each family member’s status and documents separately.
Keep household plans tied to current eligibility
Qualifying L spouses may work incident to valid dependent status with appropriate evidence, including the spouse-specific I-94. The principal’s approval does not automatically confer family status, and qualifying unmarried L dependent children under 21 do not receive the spouse’s work authorization. What goes wrong here is usually a plan built on the principal's paperwork alone.
Each dependent has an admission record of their own, and the household should hold a copy of each one, filed under that person's name, before decisions about work or school are made. Ask specifically for the spouse's own admission record rather than a family printout, and check that the class of admission and the end date on it are the ones you expect; a discrepancy found later costs far more than one found now. Where a spouse intends to work, the authorisation is generally incident to valid dependent status and is evidenced by that spouse's own record, so it can only be as reliable as the document behind it.
Hypothetical example: an engineer's household plans a second income around a start date, and the spouse's own admission record turns out to carry a different end date from the principal's, which changes what must be filed first.