What is the Marital Standard of Living (MSOL) and how is it being calculated? The MSOL is one piece that is being considered to determine permanent spousal support. Often the post-divorce MSOL will be different from the pre-divorce MSOL, as supporting two households is more expensive than supporting one household. When calculating the MSOL, two approaches can be followed:

• When focusing on income, we can calculate the cash available for living expenses. This approach is faster and less expensive to perform and does not consider many expensive items.
• When focusing on expenses, we focus on the actual spending of the parties. This approach assigns actual expenses to the parties spending habits but is very expensive and time-consuming.