Dependent status follows the principal's, so a transaction that ends or undermines the investor's classification reaches the whole household. The spouse's employment authorisation is incident to that dependent status. Children may study but not work, and dependent status ends at twenty-one regardless of how the business performs.
The household's status is only as stable as the enterprise
The dependants' position is derivative in every respect. A spouse admitted alongside an E-2 investor is employment-authorised because of that status and may work for any employer, which often becomes an important part of the household's income. That authorisation is not independent: if the investor's classification ends because the enterprise has been sold or has ceased to qualify, the spouse's ability to work ends with it.
Children may enrol in school and may not take paid work, including in the family business, which surprises families in service industries where teenagers would otherwise help at weekends. Age remains the one condition that no business decision affects, since dependent status requires the child to be unmarried and under twenty-one. Households should therefore treat a proposed sale, merger or wind-down as a family planning event and not merely a commercial one, and should ask what each member would do in each scenario before the transaction is agreed.