I have this happen often. You might want to try it both ways. File a Del joint return. Perhaps the husbands loss will help the spouse, though it all kinda evens out in the Credit to Maryland. If you do the spouse as MFS you can just override fields that are needed and put the spouse data. Only thing their is you will have the spouse snail mail the thing in. Kinda ugly if you try to efile a return with all those overridden fields. Also is they can itemize on DE and you do a MFS you will need to prorate the number based on income to total income. At least that is what I do.