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| KANE COUNTY CIRCUIT CLERK'S OFFICE "ATTORNEY INFORMATION AND CUSTOMER SERVICES" Last Update March 14, 2008 All mailings should be sent to P.O. Box 112, Geneva, IL 60134. Office hours for the Kane County Circuit Clerk's office are 8:30 AM - 4:30 PM Monday through Friday and until 7:00 PM in the lobby on Wednesday. The Clerk has offices located at 540 S. Randall Road in St. Charles. Limited hours at Room 160, 100 S 3rd Street in Geneva and at the Judicial Center, 37W777 Rt 38 in St. Charles. Circuit Clerk services are available at all locations except for traffic/criminal payments which are available only at the Circuit Clerks Office in St. Charles. Customer service is reached by dialing 630-232-3413 Monday through Friday from 8:30 AM to 4:30 PM. Due to the time involved, court orders will not be read over the telephone. Please refer to the section on Faxed Copies as an alternative. You must have a case or ticket number for our staff to assist you. The Clerk's office is prohibited by law from giving out any legal advice. Master Card and Discover are accepted at our main office and satelite office, Rm 160 at the Courthouse. A convenience fee in the amount of $3.00 will be charged. Visa is an appectable form of payment by mail only. Visa is not accepted at either our main office or satelite office. Court fines may be paid thru our E-pay system. Mastercard only is accepted. A fresh computer tape containing all Illinois attorney registration numbers is received from the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission and loaded into our computer systems each year. These numbers are our key to your identification. Remember to send any change of address, phone number, etc. to the commission as well as our office. We may have the new change of address but the IARDC tape will load the old one into the system if they haven't been notified. Your attorney number must be included on each new case information sheet, all appearances and answers, attorney bond refund and any change of address notification. Be sure you write down the correct number. Your attorney registration number may be entered on all documents, if you like. (Numbers are not available for firms.) Acceptance of faxed pleadings is currently at the discretion of the presiding judge. We will accept documents for filing by fax and will file stamp it as the original. Please do not file a duplicate original unless required by the judge. Copies of documents filed in cases stored at the main office in St. Charles may be faxed to the court locations or, to save you mileage and the cost of your time and that of your employee, copies can be faxed to your office. Payment for faxed copies must be made (in advance) by using the Fax Request Form available at our office. The charge is the same as a photocopy. A $3 convenience fee will be added for using a charge card. This is still economical for your office when compared to your savings in time and wages, especially if you order several documents at the same time. Copies faxed from our file library to Room 160 or Room 100 may also be certified. Your office is welcome to fax into Room 160 at the Courthouse or Room 100 at the Judicial Center when you are in court and have forgotten a needed document. Forms are available in a quantity of 25 and stocked for your convenience at both the Courthouse (Room 160) and at our main office. Forms may also be ordered in advance by faxing your request to (630) 208-2172. Quantities up to 25 will be mailed. Firms needing larger quantities of forms may place an order in writing. We will notify you when they are ready for pickup. Please do not remove quantities of forms from the court rooms. Many forms are now on line and can be accessed by clicking on the forms icon of this site. Forms may be filled in electronically. Please note you must still print them and provide our office with an original copy. The statute does not allow electronic filing at this time. Mailboxes for Kane County attorneys are provided in Room 160 at the courthouse. Mail from the Circuit Clerk and services you have requested will be left in your mailbox. Because of limited space and the number of practicing attorneys, boxes are shared by several attorney's or firms. Attorneys that are members of a firm are asked to use their firm's box rather than requesting an individual one. The boxes are used for the pick-up of documents (saves postage) and announcements from the Court and Circuit Clerk. Mail boxes are available upon request by sending a letter of request to the attention of the Intake Supervisor, PO Box 112, Geneva, Illinois, 60134. Boxes will be assigned as they are available. FILING NEW CASES AND DOCUMENTS Local Rule 2.17 sets out the standard format and requirements for forms and documents filed with the Circuit Clerk's Office. All documents must be filed on 8½ x 11 paper. If documents you wish to file are larger than the required standard, they should be photographically reduced in size. All new cases must be accompanied by a New Case Information Sheet. Cases can be filed by mail when accompanied by the proper fee. Fee lists are available at the Clerk's office and are also available by clicking on the Civil Fee menu icon on this web site. Always give full addresses including zip codes for all defendants. New cases filed by mail should include the new case information sheet, all pertinent documents and the correct fees based upon case type and documents sent. Include a self-addressed stamped envelope for the return of stamped documents, or your attorney box number in room 160. Documents will not be mailed out if the self-addressed stamped envelope is not provided. In our higher volume courts, cases may be batched and listed on a transfer sheet, 15 cases at a time. One check may be used for filing fees on all 15 cases. A separate check for each batch of 15 is required (or use your charge card). Be sure to verify court dates with SC/LM Scheduling first. Your copies will be mailed when a stamped, self-addressed envelope is enclosed, or for new cases, we will call and tell you when they are ready for pickup. When filing documents by mail, please send a note giving us the necessary instructions. Are they to be filed, certified or copies returned? If documents are to be returned, specify the Attorney Box Number at Room 160 or enclose a stamped, self-addressed envelope. If there isn't a stamped, self-addressed envelope sent, your documents will be held for thirty (30) days before being discarded. Do not attach copies of Discoveries, Interrogatories or previously filed documents to motions. These copies increase the cost of the file and shelf space needed over the life of the case. All of this adds to the taxpayer's cost. We need one original document for each case covered by an order or other document. Three case numbers on one order is not acceptable. The Appellate Court and our judges prefer reviewing original documents. Documents may not be processed quickly enough to be in a file for court if they were filed close to a court date. Court calls are pulled at least 2-3 days in advance. When files are pulled, they are not available for filing documents. If you've missed your deadline, we suggest that documents you want the judge to see be presented in court. Be sure to put the case number on any checks. Discovery/Interrogatories are not accepted for filing unless they are required by statute. It is not our responsibility to present court orders to the Judge for signature. Any unsigned orders mailed to the clerk will be returned. Forms, certified copies and orders printed on NCR paper, i.e. Rule to Show Cause and Body Writ, are not to be separated before the judge signs and are not certifiable without a judge's signature. All forms must be complete prior to the judge's signature. The clerk's office may not certify copies when changes have been made. All pleadings are to be signed by the attorney (notice, motion, petition, answer to complaint, affidavit) as our judges won't accept them unsigned. SMALL CLAIMS PAMPHLETS AND NAME CHANGE PAMPHLETS Small Claims pamphlets and Name Change pamphlets are available at the Clerk's office at no charge. The name change pamphlets can also be found online. INFORMATION REQUIRED ON COURT FORMS The name of the attorney, not just a check mark or name of a firm, is required on all court forms and documents, to accurately reflect presence in the courtroom. Please let us know if the order is a final disposition. The disposal yes/no box at the bottom of the form is to be filled out whenever there is more than one defendant or more than one parcel. Be specific in your orders in disposing a case. If there is more than one defendant, count or parcel mentioned in the complaint or amended complaint, be sure to check the correct box for this purpose. The single best thing you can do for us when filling out hand-written documents is to please write legibly - not neat . . . legible. Time spent deciphering is one of our unnecessary cost factors. There is case law that says the Clerk is not required to file any document he or she cannot read. Any time child support is ordered whether through the Clerk's office or not, a support order form must be used and filled out completely. We do not serve employers with Order/Notice of Withholding. Orders to Show Cause entered on a child support case will be certified at no cost. Recipients may sign up for the Child Support Enforcement Program through Health Care and Family Services Title IV-D. After signing up for services, the Kane County State's Attorney is responsible for the enforcement of child support. The Circuit Clerk is responsible for record keeping on the case. If Income withholding is ordered on a case, payments must be sent by the Employer to the State Disbursement Unit (SDU). The Circuit Clerk's Office may not process these payments. Letters of Office can be ordered ahead of time or by mail when accompanied by the correct fees. It is the duty of the moving party to see that Reports of Proceedings are brought to the Clerk's office at least two weeks prior to the filing of the common law record with the Appellate Court. The court reporters will not start preparation of the transcripts until payment is received. We now have a staff who specialize in appeals. Your cooperation in getting Report of Proceedings to our office timely is crucial so that we may file the appeal by the Appellate Court due date. The statutory fee for correction of the case number, case title, or attorney registration number on any document is $15.00 per document. i.e. three documents with the same wrong case number, or no case number, is $45.00. Consolidated Cases are filed under the lead case number only. We use the case number of the first filed case unless the order specifies otherwise. A fee applies to any incorrect case number on consolidated cases. If, after checking your records, you are still not sure of a case number, call customer service for the correct number. This saves us time when processing the documents and saves you $15.00 or more. The Scheduling Department is part of the Chief Judge's office and is not part of the Clerk's office. To schedule a case for court, you must call the Scheduling Department. The scheduling phone numbers are: Family Division -630- 232-5860; Small Claims/Law Medium/Law/Arbitration (630) 232-3470; and, Probate Division (630) 232-3461. Court clerks schedule only from court orders. The Scheduling Department and civil court rooms have calendars with closed dates. Judges set trial dates so each judge must be seen for pre-trial and trial settings. If a publication is cancelled, or the publish date changes please notify the Clerk's office immediately. The time we lose searching for a publication so that we can do our required mailings could be used to get documents in the files faster. A list of newspapers of general circulation serving Kane County is available through our web site. We provide an authorization form if you would like our office to fax the publication. Our lead times vary but they are usually about a week to ten days prior to publication. For any certified mailings, please provide the correct number of copies for each defendant you wish served along with a check for the proper fees. It is the attorney's responsibility to number his/her exhibits. The Clerk's office does not store exhibits after the case is concluded. If the case is disposed and not appealed (35 days after final order), the exhibits are to be picked up or they will be destroyed. A letter will be sent regarding your options, no response means the exhibits will be destroyed. If an exhibit is withdrawn during a trial, you will be asked to sign the exhibit sheet as a receipt. All admitted exhibits are to be given to the deputy clerk before leaving the court room. The priority for the refund of bonds is established in General Order 90-26. Attorney refunds will be made after the ordered fine and fee priorities have been deducted. If there is a surety depositing bond on behalf of a defendant, a surety release form is required before the return can be processed. Allow up to two weeks for receipt of bond refund. We do not release a driver's license without full payment of fines and costs. Defendants often assume that notification from the Secretary of State means we will give them their driver's license. The driver's license can be returned to defendant anytime after payment is made. The license is not valid until the suspension is lifted. The defendant will not have a valid driver's license until notified by the Secretary of State following payment of reinstatement fees. Scheduling must be done by fax or filed notice of motion and motion filed with the court date. Allow 5 days prior to court date. Call and ask if unsure of dates available to schedule for specific court locations. Allow sufficient time when scheduling cases as court calls are pulled 2 to 3 days in advance. Lead time is needed to prepare the call and often our judges want files in advance. The deputy clerks are responsible for files in court; DO NOT remove files from the clerk's view in the court room. When files are transferred to the Chief Judge, we transfer the physical file. When cases are scheduled in two rooms on the same day (child support/family court), only the clerk, bailiff or a judge may transport the file. Please take into account that the judge must excuse the clerk to carry the file to another courtroom. We require customers to complete a request sheet in order to view files. Your IARDC number or driver's license number will be required. Files are checked out and sent to court 2 to 3 days prior to the scheduled court date so those files may not be available for viewing. All files are stored at our main office in St. Charles. Our fax number, 630/208-2172, can be used by attorneys to pre-order files. The file library will call your office as soon as the file is ready. Please have the case number with you when you come to view files and inform personnel that you ordered the file. The Circuit Clerks Office can not provide research or record searches by telephone. All requests must be mailed to our office. There is a $6.00 charge per case searched. If the information is not on the computer, the research fee is $6.00 for every year searched. Statutorily impounded or restricted categories are: adoptions, mental health and juvenile [J, JA, JD]. Without a specific court order, no paralegal's, law clerks or attorneys will be allowed to view the file. An attorney of record may view juvenile files. An attorney from the same firm must file an appearance to view a juvenile file. A Guardian Ad Litem on an adoption case may view the file while the case is pending. Individually impounded files in other case categories: No one may view other case types impounded by court order. A court order is needed to view the file or to get copies from an impounded file. The Clerk's office at the Judicial Center and in Room 160 of the Courthouse will take filing fees for cases. Try to stop by the Clerk's office before court to pay the fees. No fees are accepted in the court rooms. Clerks can file stamp original and copies after the judge signs. If a file is available when the judge is not on the bench, it may be viewed in the court room. file:customer.srv
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