All the tax gurus out there: I am married and we own a home.

I punched the numbers for two scenarios and found a significant difference:

1. Married filing jointly with all itemized deduction claimed together.
2. Married filing separately but I claim all the mortgage interests we paid as my deduction and plus I have some college tuition that I paid, but my wife claims standard deduction.

When we add the numbers up, we get more deduction on the second one (my itemized + her standard), and because my tax bracket goes down by a lot and I get a lot more back, even though she might have to pay some. But overall, we get more in return, almost $1000 more.

Is this legal? I talked to two people I know - who know more about tax than me, and one person said it was okay, while the other one said no.

Any advices!!

Thanks