Worried about doing this on your own? You may be able to get free legal help.
Part of the safety and protection library, sponsored by Perkins Coie.
Use this program to ask for an Emergency Order of Protection in Cook County, Illinois.
You can email your forms to the court clerk and schedule a remote hearing on evenings and weekends.
After-hours court clerks and judges are available:
- Monday to Friday: 9:00 PM through 3:00 AM, and
- Saturday and Sunday: 1:00 PM through 6:00 PM
If you are filing at other times, or if you want an Order of Protection in another Illinois county, use the Order of Protection Easy Form instead.
Questions? Call or text the Illinois Domestic Violence Hotline at 877-863-6338 (877-TO-END-DV).
Easy Form information
This program will help you prepare your documents. It will ask you questions and you will enter your answers. At the end of the program, you will get a completed set of court forms with instructions that you can save and print.
Form completion time: 20 minutes to 40 minutes
You will be able to save your work in the middle of the program.
The button below takes you to another website to complete the guided interview. Learn more about Easy Forms.
The interview and forms are in English.
To use this program, you or the person you are filing the order against must:
- Live in Cook County,
- The abuse must have taken place in Cook County, or
- You must be living in Cook County temporarily to avoid abuse elsewhere
Learn more about orders of protection.
For a remote hearing after hours, you will need:
- An email address to communicate with the court clerk, and
- A phone or computer you can use to see the judge using Zoom.
To complete this program, you will need:
- Your address. If you do not want the abuser to know where you are staying, you can list an alternate address where you can receive court documents,
- Details about the abuser, such as their physical description, address, and employer, if known,
- Information about any other Orders of Protection or other court cases involving you, the other protected people, or the abuser, if known,
- Details about the abuse and when it took place,
- Details about the things you want the court to protect, such as your home, personal items, and pets, and
- Details about your things you want the court to make the abuser give back to you, or any things you have that you will return to the abuser.
If you have children with the abuser, you also need to know:
- School address information (this can be kept confidential), and
- How you want the court to restrict parenting time.
This program prepares the following forms. The forms you get will depend on your answers.
- Instructions on What's Next
- How to Ask for an Order of Protection
- Cook County Domestic Violence Cover Sheet
- Petition for Order of Protection
- Additional Minor Children
- Additional Case Information
- Additional Incidents of Abuse
- Emergency Order of Protection
- Summons (Protective Orders)
- Cook County Sheriff Information Sheet
- Confidential Name & Location of the School or Daycare
- E-filing Exemption
Legal Comment
Worried about doing this on your own? You may be able to get free legal help.
Part of the safety and protection library, sponsored by Perkins Coie.
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