A spouse in valid E-2 or E-2S status is generally work authorized incident to status, but the correct commercial and worker-classification arrangement requires its own review. Calling someone a contractor does not decide those obligations.
Keep principal eligibility clear
Describe the spouse’s actual work and the investor’s separate development-and-direction role. The principal does not receive unrestricted work authorization simply because providers are independent. Unmarried children under 21 may seek dependent status without employment authorization.
Check each person’s status and required evidence before work, and make the business forecast reflect the real cost of the planned services. Treat the spouse arrangement as two questions and resolve them with different advisers. The immigration question is straightforward, since a spouse in valid E-2 or E-2S status is generally work authorized incident to status.
The commercial question, meaning whether that person is properly engaged as a contractor or as an employee and what obligations follow, belongs to different professionals and is not answered by the label the business chooses. Write down the spouse’s actual weekly tasks before deciding which of the two questions is being asked, because a task list settles both faster than a job title does. Where a dependent child is approaching twenty-one, diarise that date now: derivative eligibility ends there, and a child helping in the business draws no employment authorization from dependent status in the meantime.
Ask counsel to confirm in writing which family members hold current work permission and on which evidence, before any of them starts.