Home  >  Ask a Lawyer  >  Illinois Landlord / Tenant  >  AttorneyPages Question and Answers

How to evict a tenant?

Question Details:Have rented house for 1 month. Already they haven't paid rent even after 10 day grace. What to do next legally to evict them? Also, they signed a 1 year lease and have already violated it by having 3 dogs; lease states 2 dogs. Having problems getting deposit. We had to make arrangements for them to pay deposit in 4 payments, they knew they had to pay deposit at lease signing. Now they said it was a complete shock that we wanted that. Since they only paid 1 payment on deposit, if we kick them out, what if there's damage to our new house? What steps do we take legally?

Asked 2 years ago under Landlord / Tenant | 1110 Views | More Legal Topics

Are you an attorney? Sign up to answer this question.
Erik Swanson | The Swanson Firm, Ltd. Answered 2 years ago | None Contributor with 0 answers This Morton Grove, IL attorney is licensed in Illinois

The first step to evict a tenant is to serve the proper notice, a 5-day for unpaid rent.  It's far easier to evict for failure to pay rent then other breaches of the lease (which are harder to prove), but possible as well (it requires a different notice, however).

It's certainly in your interest not to wait.  Bad situations almost never improve on their own.

B. B., Member, New Jersey Bar | FreeAdvice Contributing Attorney Answered 2 years ago

I'd recommend that you have a lawyer help you evict these people.  There's a very detailed process, and it has to be followed exactly;  if you make a mistake, you have to go all the way back and start over from the very beginning.  Unless you know how to do this yourself, it will almost certainly be quicker, and probably less expensive overall, if you do get an attorney.

It sounds to me like you have the kind of bottom-feeding tenants who have run this sort of game many times before, and know all the details of the eviction laws and will take shameless advantage, to delay the inevitable and run up as much of an unpaid-rent bill as they can manage.  Don't wait to get the process started.

Top Ranking Attorneys

  • Hong Shen 206 Answers | Points 4600 Gold Contributor
  • Joseph Gasparrini 46 Answers | Points 2200 Bronze Contributor
  • Kelly Broadbent 81 Answers | Points 2000 Silver Contributor
  • Russ Pietryga 77 Answers | Points 1900 Silver Contributor
  • Shawn Jackson 17 Answers | Points 850 Bronze Contributor
  • Glenn M. Lyon, Esq. 27 Answers | Points 830 Bronze Contributor
AttorneyPages.com