Update to Procedures when Opening a New Case in Cook County’s Probate Division

As published in CourtFiling.net blog on Sep 4, 2019 

Last year, I posted an article about e-filing procedures for scheduling a new probate matter’s initial case management hearing date. To recap, you had to submit your paperwork in two separate filings. First, you e-filed the Probate Division Cover Sheet and Petition for Letters of Administration. Second, you e-filed related documents (i.e. Affidavit of Heirship, bond, waiver) and added the word “motion” to the Cook County Attorney Code field to prompt the hearing calendar to pop up. Now, there are changes to this procedure, but you won’t find guides anywhere on Cook County’s website or in any FAQs. You will simply have your filing rejected.

You know I’m a paralegal. I am not giving you any legal advice and I am not telling you what to file. I just try to figure things out ahead of time to reduce your stress and help you avoid spending valuable time on hold with the clerk’s office. Please know that the processes and procedures in Cook County can change at any time and without any notice, so please give yourself plenty of time to e-file and if you have any questions, you will need to call the clerk’s office. With that said, let’s go through these new steps.

New Probate eFiling Steps

First Filing

You will still need to submit your paperwork in two separate filings. As usual in the first filing, you submit your Probate Division Cover Sheet and Petition for Letters of Administration. Once the court clerk accepts the paperwork, you will receive the case number as part of the court’s file-stamp. Up in the top left corner of one of your filed documents, you should see a notation that reads “Courtroom Number: No hearing scheduled.”

Second Filing

To get that initial hearing date, your second filing will now be a Notice that you prepare. There's no guidance anywhere what the document’s title should be, so I am going to call it a Notice of Case Management since that is what we are trying to schedule. It will contain the information that you would normally include in a Notice of Motion, but the date will be blank.

Insider Tip: The case caption on your Notice of Case Management should now include the case number and the assigned Calendar/courtroom, which would be stamped on the accepted first filing. To further research your designated Calendar, you can input your case number in the online Probate Case Search. Once you have the calendar number, you can check the Probate Division website page under the Courtrooms/Judges tab to see the corresponding judge’s name and courtroom number.

The court clerk does not clarify whether you actually need to attach the documents from your first filing (the court clerk should be able to view them from their end and see them listed on the docket). However, using abundance of caution, it might be best to file the Notice of Case Management as the first page followed by the file-stamped Probate Division Cover Sheet and Petition for Letters of Administration, all as one combined PDF file. Just be sure that the final document has been OCR’d (optical character recognition, or simply put, made searchable) before you upload it to the e-filing system.

When actually e-filing the Notice of Case Management, you will need to input the word “motion” in the Cook County Attorney Code field. Different options will become available with those settings in the Case Cross Reference Code/Hearing Requests drop down box. Even though you are not filing an actual motion, select “Motion Type-Case Management.” Doing this will trigger the hearing calendar to pop up when you click submit.

Example of Case Cross Reference Code/Hearing Requests section in CourtFiling.net:

Continue on to complete the standard steps of e-filing and submit. The hearing calendar will appear and you can select your preferred date.

Checking the Hearing Date

Once the court accepts the Notice of Case Management, check to make sure the hearing date and time is stamped in the top left corner of your filed document.

If the calendar does not appear after you click submit or for some reason you are unable to select a date, you will need to contact the e-filing probate clerk. There is a chance that the clerk will select the first available date for you, but if you need a specific date scheduled, directly contact the clerk.

If your Notice of Case Management comes back accepted but does not have a hearing date and time stamped on the document, contact the clerk so that they can manually enter it. The current phone numbers for the probate clerks are (312) 603-2591 or (312) 603-5647.

Following these steps should allow you to schedule the new probate matter's initial case management hearing date. As I stated earlier, the processes and procedures in Cook County can change at any time and without any notice, so please give yourself plenty of time to e-file or to call the clerk's office with any questions.

If you do become aware of new procedures, please drop me a note so we can share that information.

About the Author:

Tisha Delgado is a senior litigation paralegal and e-discovery specialist at Golan Christie Taglia, where she maintains complex databases and assists clients in collecting and exporting electronically stored information and social media. An educator, trainer, and thought leader, Tisha is frequently called on to speak at paralegal schools and legal education conferences about legal technology. She currently advises legal professionals on e-filing rules and procedures, and how to create successful workflows to accommodate an evolving e-filing system in the Illinois state courts. Tisha is a member of the National Federation of Paralegal Associations.