Sheriff working hard to reduce winter backlog

shervanSheriff’s Deputies processing lots of evictions

Props and kudos to Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart and his Sheriff’s Deputies who are clearly (to me) working their tails off to get eviction orders processed.  The horrible cold has created an unbelievable backlog in the processing of eviction orders, but a quick look at the Sheriff’s website will plainly show that the Sheriff is scheduling many more evictions on a daily basis than in my recent memory. 

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Cook County Sheriff warns that eviction orders might go stale

staleorderEviction enforcement by Sheriff could take longer than 120 Days!

Today (February 4, 2014), the eviction schedule website for the Cook County Sheriff includes an ominous additional warning.  Landlords in eviction lawsuits are being advised that because of the number of days evictions have been cancelled due to adverse weather, many orders for possession will expire before the Sheriff can get around to enforcing them.  A copy of the warning on the website is found below:

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Cook County Sheriff Sending Emails for Scheduled Evictions!

emailnoticeGood news for Cook County landlords.  It looks like evictions are finally scheduled to take place again beginning on January 13, 2014.

In addition, the Sheriff seems to have a new method of notifying landlords of impending eviction enforcement.  I recently received notice via email from the Cook County Sheriff that an eviction was scheduled for execution.  In the good old days, you checked the website and received a telephone call from the Sheriff’s office letting you know when and where you need to be for the eviction.  Looks like Sheriff Dart is making advances in getting the word out electronically for scheduled Cook County evictions. 

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After the Illinois eviction trial

oldschoolHypothetical: A Chicago landlord pays an attorney to draft a 5 day notice. The landlord pays a process server to serve the notice. The tenant does not pay, so the landlord pays an attorney to draft a complaint, pays a filing fee to the Circuit Court, and pays service fees to the Cook County Sheriff.  The Sheriff is unsuccessful in delivering the summons, so the landlord pays the attorney to go to court to have a process server appointed and pays a process server to serve a summons on the tenant. The tenant is served and the landlord pays an attorney to go to court for an eviction trial. The landlord prevails at the eviction trial and is granted an order for possession. The landlord tells the attorney “I’m going home to change the locks on the place”.

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What happens after getting an order for possession?

moving day for evicted tenantsSo, the landlord has served a notice, waited the notice period, filed a lawsuit, went to court, and had a trial.  At the end of the trial, the court awarded the plaintiff-landlord an “order for possession”.  The order for possession is a court order granting possession of the real estate that is the subject of the forcible entry and detainer lawsuit back to the landlord.  It means the landlord “won” the case and is entitled to recover possession of his real property.

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Illinois eviction law amended to allow rent through stay of possession

State of IllinoisIn 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?

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Cook County Sheriff’s eviction leads to drug bust!

Well, chalk one up for the Cook County Sheriff and a landlord that had to do what had to be done.  A story in the Glenview Patch tells the story of a Cook County Sheriff’s eviction gone right.  As I have mentioned before – there is no telling what will happen when the Sheriff comes calling to execute an Order for Possession. 

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