Current official Gold Card terms require each spouse or unmarried child under twenty-one to be included in the initial application and to pay a separate $15,000 DHS processing fee and $1 million gift. A successful applicant receives lawful permanent resident status through EB-1 or EB-2; re-verify the family terms on the official program page before any money moves.
Ask who is covered before deciding how much to sell
A business owner planning a sale around a family relocation should establish early which family members any route would actually cover, because the answer can change the size and timing of the transaction. Adult children outside the derivative definition need their own route, which may be unrelated and considerably slower. A child in their late teens introduces a deadline that a deal timetable will not respect.
These are family planning questions that happen to have immigration answers, and they are cheaper to ask before a sale than afterwards. Confirm the position with a licensed U.S. immigration attorney against current official guidance rather than relying on a general description, and do so before any commercial timetable makes the answer expensive to act on.
Hypothetical example: Joon is applying after selling a sports-flooring business and wants to include a spouse and a nineteen-year-old child. A family intake should list passports, civil records, age dates, prior immigration history, each person’s fee and gift obligations and whether another child needs an independent route. Birth and marriage certificates settle relationship evidence; the current official terms state that each family member has a separate processing fee and unrestricted gift.
The processing fee is paid with the application, while the gift is requested only after successful vetting. The usual mistake is assuming that an older child can be added later without consequence. The primary applicant’s gift does not erase each relative’s admissibility or the requirements of the applicable immigrant process.