Does an Ontario court consider the dependant's pre-death standard of living when setting a support award?

Yes, generally — a dependant's standard of living before the death is one of the practical realities a court looks at, though it's weighed alongside everything else rather than treated as the whole answer. Part V of the Succession Law Reform Act asks the court to consider a dependant's needs and means, which naturally brings in what kind of support and lifestyle the deceased was actually providing before death, not just bare subsistence.

That said, "standard of living" isn't a guarantee that support will exactly replicate what a dependant had before — the estate's actual size, competing claims from other dependants or beneficiaries, and the dependant's own resources and ability to become self-supporting all factor in too. A modest estate simply may not be able to maintain a previous lifestyle, however reasonable that lifestyle was. Courts also look at the length and closeness of the dependency relationship, not just a snapshot of spending before death. Because this is a balancing exercise rather than a formula, it helps to gather concrete evidence of what the deceased was actually providing — housing, regular payments, shared expenses — before making or responding to a claim, and to get legal advice on how that evidence is likely to be weighed.