Protective orders and restraining orders in Illinois

Who can ask for one

The relationship list is wide. It reaches spouses and former spouses, parents, children and stepchildren, blood relatives and in-laws by present or prior marriage, people who live together or used to live together, people who have or are said to have a child in common, people in a dating or engagement relationship whether or not it is current, people with disabilities and their personal assistants, and caregivers. A casual acquaintance, and ordinary socializing or dealing with someone in business, does not count as a dating relationship. Illinois also protects a high-risk adult with disabilities who is abused, neglected or exploited by a family or household member, and protects staff and residents of a private home or public shelter housing an abused family or household member. Someone who cannot file for themselves because of age, health, disability or inaccessibility can have another person file on their behalf. A person whose abuser does not fit this relationship list would look instead to the Stalking No Contact Order Act or the Civil No Contact Order Act. The Illinois General Assembly's site would not return the whole of Section 103 or Section 201 in one piece; the passages above were transcribed in consecutive parts from those same pages.

What you have to show

emergency order of protection — before any hearing

This is the order a court can make without the other person present. It is short by design: it holds until a hearing, and the hearing is where the longer order is decided.

An emergency order can be granted the same day, before the abuser is told anything, and it lasts at least 14 days and no more than 21 days. Illinois also provides for emergency orders outside court hours. Section 217(c) says: "(c) Emergency orders: court holidays and evenings. (1) Prerequisites. When the court is unavailable at the close of business, the petitioner may file a petition for a 21-day emergency order before any available circuit judge or associate judge who may grant relief under this Act. If the judge finds that there is an immediate and present danger of abuse to the petitioner and that the petitioner has satisfied the prerequisites set forth in subsection (a) of Section 217, that judge may issue an emergency order of protection." That subsection also provides: "(1.5) Issuance of order. The chief judge of the circuit court may designate for each county in the circuit at least one judge to be reasonably available to issue orally, by telephone, by facsimile, or otherwise, an emergency order of protection at all times, whether or not the court is in session." The middle step, the interim order, requires that the abuser has been given notice, and Section 218(a) reads: "(a) Prerequisites. An interim order of protection shall issue if petitioner has served notice of the hearing for that order on respondent, in accordance with Section 211, and satisfies the requirements of this subsection for one or more of the requested remedies. For each remedy requested, petitioner shall establish that: (1) The court has jurisdiction under Section 208; (2) The requirements of Section 214 are satisfied; (3) A general appearance was made or filed by or for respondent; or process was served on respondent in the manner required by Section 210; or the petitioner is diligently attempting to complete the required service of process. An interim order may not include the counseling, payment of support or monetary compensation remedies, unless the respondent has filed a general appearance or has been personally served." An interim order lasts up to 30 days.

How long it lasts, and whether it can be extended

A plenary order is the full order and lasts for a fixed period of up to two years. It can be extended more than once, and on a showing of good cause an extension can be granted to last until the order is vacated or modified, which means an Illinois plenary order can in practice run indefinitely. Extensions have to be asked for in open court, not through the after-hours emergency route. Section 220(c) adds: "(c) Computation of time. The duration of an order of protection shall not be reduced by the duration of any prior order of protection." So time spent under an emergency or interim order does not eat into the two years.

The statutory list

What Illinois’s own law says

Illinois ties firearms to the order in two ways. The court can order the abuser not to possess firearms or firearm parts for as long as the order lasts, can order those firearms surrendered, and can order any Firearm Owner's Identification Card or Concealed Carry License handed to the officer serving the order or to local law enforcement within 24 hours of service. Separately, the Illinois State Police must deny, or suspend or revoke and seize, a Firearm Owner's Identification Card held by a person who is subject to a protective order. The statewide court forms include a Search Warrant for Seizure of Firearms and an information sheet to go with it, which matches the search and seizure part of the same statutory remedy. The full text of the firearms remedy is longer than the passages above, which cover the prohibition, the surrender order, and the card.

Fees

Illinois law says there is no clerk's fee for filing, amending, vacating, certifying or photocopying an order of protection petition or order, no fee for issuing alias summons, and no sheriff's fee for serving the papers. That is a flat no-fee rule written into the statute itself, so there is nothing to apply to have waived for these steps. The Illinois courts publish approved statewide Order of Protection forms, including "How to Ask for an Order of Protection", the Petition, the Emergency Order of Protection and the Order of Protection, and the courts' own page states that all Illinois courts must accept these forms.

What a violation is, and what it carries

Four things about Illinois are easy to get wrong. First, mutual orders are flatly banned. Section 215 reads: "Mutual orders of protection are prohibited. Correlative separate orders of protection undermine the purposes of this Act and are prohibited unless both parties have properly filed written pleadings, proved past abuse by the other party, given prior written notice to the other party unless excused under Section 217, satisfied all prerequisites for the type of order and each remedy granted, and otherwise complied with this Act." It goes on: "The fact that correlative separate orders are issued shall not be a sufficient basis to deny any remedy to petitioner or to prove that the parties are equally at fault or equally endangered." Second, Illinois does not require visible injuries. Section 214(a) says the court "shall not require physical manifestations of abuse on the person of the victim", and abuse in Illinois expressly includes harassment, intimidation of a dependent, interference with personal liberty and willful deprivation, not only physical abuse. Third, the harassment definition carries six kinds of conduct that are presumed to cause emotional distress unless the other side disproves the presumption by a preponderance of the evidence, including repeated telephoning, repeated following, repeated surveillance outside a home, school, workplace or vehicle, and improperly concealing or repeatedly threatening to remove or conceal a child. Fourth, a plenary order is capped at two years, but Section 220(e) allows an extension "upon good cause shown, to remain in effect until the order of protection is vacated or modified", so the two-year figure is not the whole picture. Illinois also runs an after-hours route: when the court is closed, a petitioner may seek a 21-day emergency order before any available circuit or associate judge, and the chief judge may designate a judge to be reachable at all times, including by telephone.

What it covers — and note the words “firearm parts”

Throughout, the remedy at 750 ILCS 60/214(b)(14.5) now reaches “firearms or firearm parts that could be assembled into an operable firearm.” The heading was renamed to “Prohibition of possession of firearms and firearm parts; search and seizure of firearms and firearms parts.” Disassembling a weapon is no longer a way around the order.

The surrender clock — (b)(14.5)(A)(ii)

“Any firearms or firearm parts on the respondent’s person or at the place of service shall be surrendered to the serving officers at the time of service of the order of protection, and any other firearms or firearm parts shall be surrendered to local law enforcement within 24 hours of service of the order of protection.”

The FOID card and any Concealed Carry License go the same way — to the serving officer at service, or to local law enforcement within 24 hours — and the agency “shall immediately mail” them to the Illinois State Police for safekeeping.

The search warrant — and it is available ex parte

This is the genuinely new machinery. On issuing an order, the court “shall issue a search warrant for the seizure of any firearms or firearm parts” if, on sworn testimony, it finds that the respondent “poses a credible threat to the physical safety of the petitioner” and there is probable cause to believe they possess such items, that the items are at a residence, vehicle or other property to be searched, and that “the credible threat … is immediate and present.”

An ex parte warrant is available where those elements are met, “personal injury to the petitioner is likely to occur if the respondent received prior notice”, and the emergency-order requirements of section 217 are satisfied. And — unusually helpful if you have no documents — “Oral testimony is sufficient in lieu of an affidavit to support a finding of probable cause.”

Two practical points. The warrant is not automatic: subparagraph (A-1)(ii) says that if you “do not seek a warrant” or the requirements are not met, the ordinary prohibition alone may be granted. You have to ask. And the Act requires you to prepare an information sheet for the officers — your contact details, the respondent’s description and date of birth or approximate age, height, weight, race and hair color, the days and times they are likely to be there, and whether other people are likely to be present. Prepare that before your hearing.

When the police must act — and why a report in the last 90 days matters

Subparagraph (A-1)(viii) sets two different speeds, and which one you get depends on something you may be able to influence now:

Read that carefully, because it is the rare provision where a step you take before filing changes what the law does for you. A credible report of domestic violence to your local law enforcement agency within the previous 90 days puts your warrant on the fast track and removes the agency’s power to negate it. If you have been weighing whether to make a report, that is a concrete reason to.

A return must be filed within 24 hours of execution setting out time, date, location and what was seized. Service of the order itself must, “to the extent possible, be concurrent with the execution of any search warrant under this paragraph.”

They cannot hand the guns to a friend

“Except as provided in subparagraph (E), the respondent is prohibited from transferring firearms or firearm parts to another individual in lieu of surrender to law enforcement.”

This closes the oldest loophole in firearms surrender: the cousin who agrees to hold them. Subparagraph (E) allows a supervised third-party transfer only on a motion the court rules on. The law enforcement agency keeps the items “for the duration of the order of protection” and must give an itemized receipt to both the respondent and the court.

On return: at the end of the order the respondent may request their items back, and they “shall be returned within 14 days of the request” if they are lawfully eligible. Where they are not eligible, or cannot be located, or fail to respond to more than three requests, the court may order the items destroyed, used for police training, or turned over to an eligible third party who does not live with them.

One thing the rewrite took away, and one it added

Taken away: the old alternative route that mirrored the federal statute — an order that “by its terms explicitly prohibits the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force” — was deleted. Illinois now requires, in (cc), “a finding that such person represents a credible threat to the physical safety of such intimate partner or child.” Ask for that finding expressly. Under the new text it is not optional boilerplate; it is the gateway to the whole remedy.

Added: the notice condition in (aa) is now satisfied either by a hearing with actual notice “or the petitioner has satisfied the requirements of Section 217” — the emergency order provision. So in Illinois, unlike under federal law, the firearms remedy is reachable at the emergency, ex parte stage. That is the single most important difference between Illinois law and the federal rule described below.

An order from one state works in all of them

This is federal law and it does not change at a state line. An order issued by one state, tribe or territory must be enforced by every other as if that state had issued it. And you do not have to register it in the new state first — registration is optional, not a precondition to enforcement.

The same section also says the enforcing state must not tell the restrained person that the order has been registered there unless the protected person asks it to, and must not publish anything online that would be likely to reveal the protected person’s identity or location.