The current official terms allow a spouse and unmarried children under twenty-one to be included in the initial application. Each included family member currently requires an additional nonrefundable US$15,000 DHS processing fee and US$1 million gift; those terms and any age-protection issue must be re-verified before filing or transferring money.
Read the family terms on the day, then write them down
Employment-based immigrant categories generally allow a spouse and unmarried children under twenty-one to accompany or follow to join, and the official program page states how family members are treated under the framework and what additional processing fee and gift apply to each. Two facts do not change with the framework. An unmarried child's eligibility ends at twenty-one, subject to the age calculation the Child Status Protection Act provides, so a child in the late teens is a scheduling constraint rather than an afterthought.
And a married adult child is outside the derivative definition entirely. The comparison with his pending employer petition is worth making explicitly, because that petition also carries derivative eligibility for the same family members, and the household may find that the two routes differ less for the family than for the principal. Write the family terms and their date into the file alongside everything else.
Hypothetical example: a Hope museum-conservation specialist considers the framework with a spouse and an unmarried twenty-year-old son who plans to marry next summer. The first review identifies each person’s relationship, age, and intended filing sequence. Birth and marriage records settle the family link; the son’s marriage date may end derivative eligibility even before he turns twenty-one.
The decision is whether to file the family together before that event, postpone the marriage, or plan an independent category for him. Each family member must still complete the required vetting and any stated individual payment.