Can Your Spouse Work and Your Kids Go to School? Founder-Visa Dependents Compared: France, Portugal, Spain (2026)
Two questions decide where a founding family actually lands: can my spouse work, and can my kids go to school? France gives the spouse a work permit from day one through the Talent-famille card. Spain grants accompanying family full work authorization under Law 14/2013 and lets them apply alongside you. Portugal is the split case: since Lei n.º 61/2025 (in force late October 2025), most residents must wait two years before reuniting a spouse from abroad, but highly-qualified D3 holders and minor children are exempt. Schooling is the easy part: all three treat resident children's education as compulsory and free regardless of your visa. This guide compares the family rules across all three founder routes.
Two questions decide whether a founder’s move to Europe works for the whole household, not just the founder: can my spouse work, and can my kids go to school? The short answer for 2026: your children can go to school in all three countries, free and compulsory in the public system, no matter which visa you hold. Your spouse can work in all three too, but the route and the timing differ sharply. France hands the spouse a work permit on day one through the Talent (famille) card. Spain grants accompanying family full work authorization under Law 14/2013 and lets them apply alongside you. Portugal is the split case: since Lei n.º 61/2025 came into force on 23 October 2025, most residents must complete two years before they can reunite an adult spouse from abroad, but highly-qualified D3 holders, minor children and the parent who comes with them are carved out of that wait.
This guide compares the family rules across the founder routes Relovisa actually files: France Talent, Portugal’s D3, D2 and D8, and Spain’s Startup Visa and Digital Nomad Visa. It sits alongside the cross-country pieces on all-in cost, income thresholds and the citizenship clock; here the lens is narrower and more human, the two things families ask first. It is general information, not legal advice; family rules moved in all three countries during 2025, so confirm your own case with a qualified adviser before you file.
The two things that actually vary: work timing and reunification wait
Every country in this comparison lets a founder’s spouse work and every one educates the children. The real differences are two: how fast the spouse can start working, and whether you can bring family from abroad immediately or after a wait. Read the table on those two axes, then the country sections explain the mechanics.
| France Talent | Portugal (D3 / D2 / D8) | Spain (Startup / DNV) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Family permit | Talent (famille) card | Family reunification permit (autorização por reagrupamento) | Family authorization under Law 14/2013 |
| Apply together from the start? | Yes, simplified accompanying procedure | Yes, family can apply with you at the consulate | Yes, filed jointly or later |
| Spouse work right | Full: the card is a work authorization | Full, same rights as nationals, once the permit is granted | Full: work for a Spanish employer or remotely |
| Spouse can start working | From day one, no extra step | Once the reunification permit is issued | Once the family authorization is granted |
| Wait to reunite an adult from abroad | None (accompanying procedure) | None for D3, Golden Visa, Blue Card, minor children and their parent; two years for other D8/D2/D7 adults since Lei n.º 61/2025 | None |
| Minor children | No card needed; travel on a DCEM | Exempt from the wait, and they carry the co-parent spouse with them | Included as dependents |
| Children’s schooling | Compulsory and free, ages 3 to 16 | Compulsory and free, ages 6 to 18 | Compulsory and free, ages 6 to 16 |
| Founder citizenship clock | 5 years | 10 years (7 for EU/CPLP) | 10 years |
France: the Talent (famille) card is a work permit
France has the most family-friendly design of the three, and it is not close on the work-timing axis. A Talent holder’s spouse and minor children come through a simplified accompanying procedure rather than standard family reunification, which means there is no 18-month prior-residence requirement to satisfy first. The family applies for their cards within about a month of arriving in France.
The spouse receives the Talent (famille) card, and the key fact is that this card is itself a work authorization. The spouse can take up any professional activity, employed or self-employed, from their first day in France, with no separate step at the Ministry of Labour and nothing for a prospective employer to file. The card is issued for the same remaining validity as the founder’s own Talent card, so the family’s status stays synchronized with yours through each renewal.
Minor children do not need a residence permit at all. They travel on a DCEM (document de circulation pour étranger mineur), and their schooling is a given: education in France is compulsory from age 3 to 16, free in the public system, and open to resident children regardless of the parent’s permit. On the money side, France is the odd one out: there is no codified per-dependent savings figure. The porteur-de-projet resource test is the founder’s own €22,404.20 (one year of gross SMIC since 1 June 2026), and that single figure is read as covering the applicant and the accompanying family together. In practice a préfecture reading a family file wants to see more than the bare threshold sitting in the account, which is why advisers budget a visible buffer per dependent rather than quoting a legal minimum that does not exist. Government fees do scale per person: about €449 per applicant (a €99 visa fee plus a €350 permit tax), and note that the permit tax itself rose sharply on 1 May 2026, so a family of three now budgets roughly €1,350 in government fees alone. If citizenship is part of the plan, France keeps the founder on a five-year naturalization clock, the fastest of the three countries here, which the citizenship-timeline comparison sets against Portugal’s and Spain’s ten.
Portugal: excellent on the D3, a two-year catch on the D8 and D2
Portugal is the country where the visa you choose changes the family answer, and where 2025’s law changes bite. Lei n.º 61/2025, published on 22 October 2025, amended Article 98 of Law 23/2007 and introduced a two-year prior-residence requirement: as a general rule, a resident must now hold a valid residence permit for two years before requesting in-country family reunification of a spouse or adult. That is a real change from the previous framework, and it is why “just bring them over later” is no longer safe advice for every route.
The carve-outs are what make the route choice matter, and they are broader than the headlines suggested. Article 98(3) exempts dependent minor children, the spouse who is a parent of those children, and family members of residents on three named routes: highly-qualified professionals on the D3 (Article 90), Golden Visa investors (Article 90-A), and EU Blue Card holders (Article 121-A). Two consequences follow. First, a founder with a minor child effectively brings the other parent along with the child, whatever the route. Second, the founder most exposed to the wait is the childless D8 or D2 holder, because Article 98(3) does not name the D8 (remote income) or D2 (entrepreneur) routes. There is also a middle tier most coverage misses: under Article 98(2), a couple who lived together for at least eighteen months before the move can reunite after fifteen months of the resident’s permit rather than two years. So a D3 founder who wants to bring a spouse can do so without the two-year wait, while a D8 or D2 founder who plans to reunite an adult spouse in a later step can face it. This is a genuine, ownable edge of the D3 route, and if a working spouse joining without delay matters to you and you could qualify either way, it is a reason to look hard at the D3 over the D8 (the two are set side by side in the D3 vs D8 comparison).
There is an important practical nuance that softens the wait for everyone. The two-year rule targets later, in-country reunification. If the family is ready to move together, they can apply alongside the main applicant at the consulate from the start (family accompaniment), and Portuguese consulates assess the profiles together rather than treating the family as a later reunification. For a founder whose spouse and children are relocating in the same window, applying together is usually the cleaner path on any route.
Once a family member holds a Portuguese residence permit, they have the same rights as nationals: the right to work, access to the public health service, and access to education. Children’s schooling is compulsory and free in the state system, from age 6 to 18 or the end of secondary school. On cost, Portugal charges €110 for the consular visa plus a €307.20 AIMA residence-permit fee (in force since 1 March 2026) per person, and AIMA’s March 2026 table added a separate reception-and-analysis charge on many requests, so budget above the headline figure. Each dependent adds a proportion of the minimum wage to the savings buffer that anchors the D8 (€11,040, twelve times the 2026 minimum wage of €920) and the D2 (€11,040 plus real business investment). Portugal’s citizenship clock is ten years, seven for EU and CPLP nationals, counted from when the first permit is issued, after the nationality reform in force since 19 May 2026.
One caveat worth stating plainly. The reform reached its final shape only after the Constitutional Court intervened: in Acórdão n.º 785/2025 of 8 August 2025, the court struck down the original, exception-free two-year rule as incompatible with constitutional protection of family life, along with other provisions of the bill, and Parliament added the Article 98(3) exemptions before the law was promulgated in October. That history is why the exemption list matters so much and why it is worth re-checking: this is recent law, applied by an agency still working through a backlog. Verify the current position for your specific route before relying on it.
Weighing Portugal’s D3 for a family where the spouse wants to work? Relovisa files the D3 with its own Portuguese entity as employer of record, and can tell you on a short call whether your household qualifies for the no-wait family route or whether another visa fits better. See the D3 package or book a consultation.
Spain: full work rights for family, join from the start
Spain’s founder routes, the Startup Visa and the Digital Nomad Visa, both run on Law 14/2013, and the family design is generous. A holder’s spouse or registered partner, children under 18, dependent adult children, and dependent parents can obtain residence as family members. The application can be filed jointly with the main application or added later, so a family that wants to arrive together can do so from day one.
The work right is the headline: family members receive residence with full work authorization. A spouse can take a job with a Spanish company or keep working remotely for a foreign employer, with no separate work-permit process. That puts Spain alongside France on the work-right axis, and ahead of a Portugal D8 or D2 that involves a later reunification step.
On the money test, the two Spanish routes differ because they rest on different indices. The Startup Visa means test is IPREM-based: the main applicant proves 100% of the IPREM (€600/month in 2026, unchanged since 2023) and 50% of the IPREM (about €300/month) per additional family member, though Relovisa advises a larger practical buffer for a credible file. The Digital Nomad Visa is SMI-based: €2,849/month for the main applicant (200% of the 2026 SMI, which rose to €1,221/month in 14 payments), plus 75% of the SMI for the first family member (about €1,069/month) and 25% for each additional one (about €356/month).
Keep the two straight, because conflating the DNV’s SMI figure with the Startup Visa’s IPREM test is the single most common error in Spanish family-cost content; the Startup vs DNV vs autónomo breakdown keeps them separate.
Children’s education in Spain is compulsory and free from ages 6 to 16. The practical unlock is the empadronamiento, the town-hall registration you complete after arrival, which is what gets a child a place in the local public school. A note on tax: the Beckham regime can matter for a working spouse’s own income, but it applies through an employment frame and is not automatic; that interaction is covered in the IFICI vs Beckham comparison rather than here.
Schooling: the easy part in all three
For all the difference on the work-and-reunification axis, schooling is remarkably uniform. France, Portugal, and Spain each treat education for resident children as compulsory and free in the public system, independent of the parent’s visa type. A child on your family permit is entitled to a state school place. The only real variables are the enrollment mechanics (a DCEM and school registration in France, municipal registration and matrícula in Portugal, the empadronamiento in Spain) and the age band of compulsory schooling: France runs from 3 to 16, Spain from 6 to 16, and Portugal from 6 to 18 or the completion of secondary school, the longest of the three. International and private schools exist in every major city as a separate, paid choice, common among relocating founder families who want continuity of curriculum or language, but they are never the only option.
The verdict: match the family to the route
- Choose France if a spouse who works from day one is the priority. The Talent (famille) card is a work permit in itself, the family comes through a simplified accompanying procedure with no wait, and the founder is on the fastest citizenship clock. The trade-off is France’s higher salary and savings bar.
- Choose Portugal’s D3 if you want the same no-wait family outcome on a highly-qualified route: D3 holders are exempt from the two-year reunification wait, and a spouse gains full national-equivalent rights once the permit is granted. Be deliberate about the D8 or D2 if you are a childless couple planning to bring the spouse in a second step, because those routes can hit the two-year wait unless the family applies together at the consulate.
- Choose Spain if you want family included from the start with full work authorization and a lighter means test on the Startup Visa. The DNV is the higher-income path; the Startup Visa’s IPREM floor is the more accessible one for a family.
Across all three, the two moves that keep a family plan clean are the same: apply together from the outset wherever the route allows it, and prove the per-dependent funds for the current year. Get those right and the harder-sounding questions, spouse employment and children’s schooling, resolve themselves.
Planning a founder move as a family and not sure which route keeps everyone working and settled fastest? Relovisa files France Talent, Portugal’s D3 and D2, and Spain’s Startup Visa, and can map your household against the family rules of each on a single call. Start with the D3 package or book a consultation.
Sources
Links verified July 2026.
- Service-Public, Multi-year residence card “talent (famille)”, confirms the talent-family card is a work authorization and the accompanying procedure, verified July 2026
- Welcome to France / Business France, Family members of Talent permit holders, simplified accompanying procedure, spouse work right, DCEM for minors, verified July 2026
- France-Visas, International talents, Talent and Talent-famille framework, verified July 2026
- Lei n.º 61/2025, de 22 de outubro, amends Law 23/2007 including Article 98 family reunification, two-year prior-residence rule and exemptions, verified July 2026
- Law 23/2007 (consolidated), Article 98 family reunification and Article 90 highly-qualified activity, Diário da República, verified July 2026
- Tribunal Constitucional, Acórdão n.º 785/2025 of 8 August 2025, striking down the original exception-free two-year reunification rule and other norms of the bill; press coverage via Público, verified July 2026
- European Commission, Family member in Portugal, reunited family members’ equal rights to work, health and education, verified July 2026
- AIMA fee-table update effective 1 March 2026, €307.20 grant/renewal residence-permit fee, The Portugal News, verified July 2026
- Law 14/2013, of 27 September, consolidated English text, family members’ residence and work authorization for Startup and Digital Nomad routes, verified July 2026
- Plataforma ONE, Application for the Entrepreneur Visa, joint or later family application under Law 14/2013, verified July 2026
- Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores, Digital Nomad Visa, family inclusion and income requirements, verified July 2026
- Lei n.º 85/2009 (consolidated), compulsory schooling from 6 to 18 in Portugal, Diário da República, verified July 2026
- Ministère de l’Éducation nationale / Code de l’éducation Art. L.131-1, compulsory instruction from age 3 to 16 in France, verified July 2026
- SMIC revalorised on 1 June 2026 to €1,867.02 gross per month, giving the €22,404.20 annual reference, verified July 2026
- Portuguese minimum wage 2026, €920/month, the basis of the €11,040 savings buffer, verified July 2026
- AIMA fee table from 1 March 2026 and the additional reception-and-analysis charge, Público coverage, verified July 2026
