A finite assignment leaves a choice between moving together, travelling in stages or remaining apart. Eligible spouses and unmarried children under 21 may seek L-2. Check each person’s authorized stay and any effect of the principal ending work with counsel; a project end date alone is not a substitute for reviewing immigration records.
Weigh the disruption against the duration
Set out what a move actually involves for each person — schooling mid-year, a spouse leaving a role, tenancy commitments — against the assignment's stated length and the chance it changes. A spouse in valid L-2S status is authorized to work incident to that status, though finding suitable work for a short defined period is its own question. Children in L2 are not work authorized.
Add one calculation to that comparison: what a short assignment costs if it turns into a long one. Assignments are extended far more often than they are cut short, and a family that has built everything around eighteen months can find the second stretch much harder than the first: the sublet has to be renewed or replaced, the school place taken as a stopgap has to become something permanent, and the career one spouse merely paused has to be restarted somewhere new. Sketch the longer version once, at the outset, and note which decisions would need revisiting.
Hypothetical example: a hotel property-management systems specialist's family plans a nine-month stay around a sabbatical, and the exercise of writing down what a two-year version would require identifies three commitments that are worth structuring differently from the start at almost no additional cost.