Dependents' plans typically follow the principal applicant's, so a refusal usually pauses TD plans as well. Avoid firm commitments, like enrolling children or ending a lease, until the principal case has a clearer path forward following legal review.
Keep dependent decisions provisional
A refusal often arrives after the family has already made partial plans, school inquiries, a moving date, a spouse's job notice. Treat those as reversible until the reviewed strategy is settled. If children's school records or a spouse's own documentation were part of what raised questions, address those specifically rather than assuming the family side will resolve itself once the principal issue is fixed.
There is a further point worth making to the household at this stage. Dependents in this category hold TD status, which carries no work authorization, so a spouse who intends to work needs an independent basis with its own timeline. A family absorbing a refusal is often tempted to accelerate the parts of the plan that feel controllable, and a spouse's job search is one of them.
Set out instead which commitments can still be undone and at what cost, and hold them until counsel has read the actual refusal and said what changes. That conversation usually takes days, not weeks.