As expected, the Cook County Sheriff will not be enforcing orders for possession to evict any tenants from December 19, 2011 to January 2, 2012. After this coming Friday, tenants will have a 17 day reprieve from being evicted. However, this does NOT mean that the courts or closed or that eviction cases are not … Read more
I was recently contacted by a property owner who inquired about removing a tenant who is renting a room in the property owner’s house. I explained to the property owner that the procedures of the Forcible Entry and Detainer Act must be satisfied to remove the tenant.
The property owner then informed me that ‘there is no lease’ and that the tenant has to leave as ‘it is my house’. Many landlords feel this way.
In August, I wrote about the “best case scenario” timeline for a first district Cook County eviction. This post is about the opposite side of the process or what I call the “worse case scenario”. That’s not a typo. I mean “worse”, not “worst”. I don’t think I have seen the system at its worst yet. The eviction practice has taught me that I have not seen close to everything.
In an Illinois “joint action” forcible entry and detainer case (ie. an eviction lawsuit asking for both rent due and possession), plaintiffs can plead for and judges routinely award plaintiffs a judgment against defendants for pro rata rent through the day of the eviction trial. Governor Quinn just signed into law HB 1209. The bill, effective as of January 1, 2012, allows a landlord plaintiff to include in an eviction complaint a request for the pro rata amount of rent due for any period that a judgment for possession is stayed. So, what does this mean?
When I talk to landlords about the Illinois eviction process, one of their first questions is “how long”? The easy answer is as follows: long. I wish that were not the case, but it is the truth. The process is not as fast, convenient, or easy as any landlord would like it to be. I thought it might be instructive to demonstrate the timeline for a Cook County Illinois eviction using the example of a nonpaying Chicago tenant.
In a past blog post, I brought my readers through a copy of a typical Cook County Sheriff eviction information letter. That’s the letter the Sheriff sends to a landlord or landlord’s attorney that contains the Sheriff’s District and Receipt Number. Lately, my office has not been receiving these notices in the mail. Recently, we found out on the morning of an eviction that it was proceeding that day. As such, it is necessary to come up with a way to possibly figure out the district number without the assistance of the letter that may or may not timely arrive in the mail.
NOTE: The form below is NOT the current form. Please see here. Landlords placing an eviction with the Cook County Sheriff have a new form to fill out when they place their eviction for execution by the Sheriff. The form is informational in nature and must be presented to the Sheriff’s office at the same time the eviction fee is paid and the order is placed. In my opinion, this form (which can be found after the jump) is much improved from previous versions.
In Illinois, can a “non-attorney” get involved in the eviction process? Is the assistance of a lawyer necessary to file a forcible entry and detainer suit? In most cases, a non-attorney landlord may represent himself or herself without an attorney. There are a few exceptions. In most instances, Corporations and LLCs must be represented in court by an attorney.
Not every Illinois landlord or tenant has heard of “cash for keys” but, chances are, if they hang around the rental markets long enough, they will… or should. Cash for keys is an alternative to the eviction process. It works like this: a landlord offers some amount of cash to a tenant the landlord would otherwise want to evict in exchange for the tenant’s return to the landlord of an empty rental unit and the keys to that unit. It’s that easy.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the procedures at the Cook County Sheriff for enforcing court entered residential eviction orders. In that article, I indicated that a few weeks after paying the Sheriff the eviction service fee, his office would send a letter in the mail with the district number and sheriff’s number on it. (UPDATE: you can also learn the Sheriff’s district by taking the last three digits of the zip code of the property address to be evicted). From there, a lessor must check the Sheriff’s website daily to match up the numbers to find out when the eviction will take place. I wanted to show what that letter currently looks like (after the jump).