Illinois General Assembly - Illinois Compiled Statutes

Updating the database of the Illinois Compiled Statutes (ILCS) is an ongoing process. Recent laws may not yet be included in the ILCS database, but they are found on this site as Public Acts soon after they become law. For information concerning the relationship between statutes and Public Acts, refer to the Guide.

Because the statute database is maintained primarily for legislative drafting purposes, statutory changes are sometimes included in the statute database before they take effect. If the source note at the end of a Section of the statutes includes a Public Act that has not yet taken effect, the version of the law that is currently in effect may have already been removed from the database and you should refer to that Public Act to see the changes made to the current law.

735 ILCS 5/2-201

(735 ILCS 5/2-201) (from Ch. 110, par. 2-201)

Sec. 2-201. Commencement of actions - Forms of process.

(a) Every action, unless otherwise expressly provided by statute,
shall be commenced by the filing of a complaint. The clerk shall issue
summons upon request of the plaintiff. The form and substance of the
summons, and of all other process, and the issuance of alias process,
and the service of copies of pleadings shall be according to
rules.

(b) One or more duplicate original summonses may be issued, marked
"First Duplicate," "Second Duplicate," etc., as the case may be,
whenever it will facilitate the service of summons in any one or more
counties, including the county of venue.

(c) A court's jurisdiction is not affected by a technical error in format of a summons if the summons has been issued by a clerk of the court, the person or entity to be served is identified as a defendant on the summons, and the summons is properly served.  This subsection is declarative of existing law.

(Source: P.A. 100-1048, eff. 8-23-18.)