The treatment of a spouse and children falls under the program's own published terms and should be read there directly. Do not assume the derivative rules from the investor category or the dependant rules from the temporary work categories carry over, because they belong to different frameworks with different provisions.
List the household before considering the payment
Write out each family member with their age, citizenship and what they would need to do in the United States: work, study, or neither. Then take those requirements to the official materials and see which are addressed. Where the terms do not answer a family's question, that is an open question, and a household should not resolve it by analogy to another program or by an intermediary's reassurance. Consider what else the family needs beyond status: school placement, a spouse's professional licence in a particular state, health coverage, and where they will live. Many households find, after this exercise, that their real problem is one that no single program solves, and that is worth learning before a payment rather than after.
Hypothetical example: an independent animation-studio owner has a married adult son and a minor niece living in the household. A first review identifies every person the applicant hopes to include and compares each relationship to the current official Gold Card terms. Shared residence or financial dependence does not itself establish coverage. The individual gift payment must be evaluated separately from family eligibility. If the materials do not answer a relationship question, treat it as unresolved and plan a separate status path for that person rather than paying on the assumption that family rules mirror another category.