The investor's spouse and unmarried children under twenty-one may be included as derivatives, receiving conditional permanent residence alongside the investor.
Derivatives are defined by marriage and by age on the relevant date
Hypothetical example: The spouse and unmarried children under twenty-one qualify as derivative beneficiaries. Age is the requirement that most often causes difficulty, because the process is long and children do not stop having birthdays. The Child Status Protection Act allows certain periods to be deducted from a child's age for this purpose, and the calculation depends on processing times and visa availability, so it needs to be run on real dates rather than assumed.
Adult children over twenty-one and the investor's own parents are not derivatives and would need routes of their own. Note also that jobs created for the investor's immediate family do not count toward the ten-job requirement, so a plan that involves employing an adult child in the enterprise should be examined for that reason too. Where a family has a child close to the age limit, the age analysis should be done before choosing between project options with different timelines.