The principal’s qualifying foreign-employment requirement should not simply be imposed on an accompanying spouse. Assess the spouse’s actual derivative eligibility and status separately.
Distinguish the worker’s qualifying year from the household’s plans
A qualifying L spouse may work incident to valid status with appropriate spouse-specific I-94 evidence. An unmarried child under 21 may qualify as an L dependant but does not gain the spouse’s employment authorization; childcare or school schedules do not change those rules.
Spouses and unmarried children under 21 use L-2 status in both cases. Children’s age and education plans may affect whether one combined move makes sense. A spouse's own employer still completes an independent verification of work eligibility, separate from any calendar the household has already built around childcare or school schedules. Provide that employer with the spouse's own evidence of status directly, rather than routing it through the principal applicant's own employer, since the two employment relationships are never treated as the same file. Keep a written record of the schedule actually worked, including any later changes to it, so the household's own calendar and the employer's payroll records stay fully consistent with each other over time. Revisit that documentation whenever the schedule changes again, because outdated records remain a common source of confusion during any later review of the complete file.