Not only does our weather lately resemble January and February, but the time it take for the Cook County Sheriff to process an eviction is just like in January or February.
The Sheriff’s office is now quoting that it is taking them approximately twelve weeks to enforce an order for possession. When will this ease up?
Is this twelve weeks after the judgment and order for possession?
Actually, it is twelve weeks after the order for possession stay expires and the order is brought to the Sheriff’s office for execution. I can only imagine that the volume of evictions related to landlord/tenant, condominium association, and foreclosure issues is massive.
The sheriff came to evicted my sister. She wasn’t home. Her neighbor told her they knocked three times, came in and left. They didn’t leave any information. She is moving Saturday. What happens next?
Leann, I can’t offer you legal advice here, as I would need to know lots more facts about your particular situation. I don’t know if you are the landlord or if your sister is just the tenant. From your comment, however, it sounds like the landlord was not present to “meet” the Sheriff. It is very possible that the eviction was called off. Landlords need to comply with the Sheriff’s rules for conducting an eviction. Take a look at this link, particularly the third section. That said, it is always possible that the Sheriff could reschedule or come back, so your sister should probably consult an attorney about her rights immediately. If you would like to discuss the possibility of engaging us to represent you, please feel free to contact me.
Just an update as to how long it’s taking the Cook County sheriff to come out (I was evicted this week). I was able to find out the receipt # of my eviction and the date it was filed. In my case, it took the sheriff 15 weeks to come by and do their duty. I bailed out in the morning, so I was not there. Also, if you want to fight the eviction, there are ways to gum up the works. It took the landlord 9 months to evict me from the time I was served the 5-day notice to the time the sheriff came by. If my attorney had done discovery and a jury trial, I could have got at least another 6 weeks in the apt, but I didn’t have his fee to pay for it. You do what you can when the economy is tough.
I considered long and hard whether or not to approve this comment. In the end, I think that the comment is instructive as to what is going on “out there” in the real world. While I do not agree with many of the delay tactics that tenants engage in, the system is the system and there is no doubt that the system has a number of built in delays that can throw the process off track. Smart landlords will build this fact into their thinking and will recognize that the inefficiencies of the system are just some of the costs of doing business as a landlord. That said, landlords are not banks. Many, if not most, Chicago landlords are regular people struggling to make ends meet just like their tenants. Professional tenants (ie. tenants who go from landlord to landlord getting evicted after paying nominal amounts of rent) are out there. They exploit the system. Good landlords will be “on their game” and on the lookout for these folks and will hopefully, through proper screening, be able to weed them out.