STARTING AUGUST 10TH, ALL CVLS GAL CASES WILL BE HEARD AT 9AM!
We are excited to announce that starting Monday, August 10th, Judge Miller will begin a new 9:00 am Zoom court call specifically for CVLS GAL cases. This should reduce the time our volunteers and staff have to spend in the Zoom waiting room as other cases are called. Please notify the parties in your cases of this time change as soon as possible. CVLS will not be reaching out to individual parties. The Zoom meeting information will remain the same.
We also want to provide further clarification for some existing protocols. Thank you for your patience as the court navigates this new process.
GAL REPORTS & SUBMISSION TIMELINES:
- If you will be sending the parties in your case a copy of your report by email, please send your report to your supervisor at least a week in advance of your court date. We typically have at least five CVLS cases up on any given day, and we need a little advance notice to review reports and respond with edits and suggestions.
- If you will be sending your report to parties by mail, please make sure to send your report to your supervisor two weeks in advance of your court date to allow time for edits before you mail out your report a week in advance of court.
LONG WAIT TIMES IN ZOOM WAITING ROOM
The 10:00 and 11:00 am court calls have been very heavy this month, and Court has been running very long. Do not be surprised if you are in the waiting room for at least an hour. Remember that you can do other things while you are waiting for your case to be called! We hope to help alleviate this problem with the new 9am call.
COURT ORDERS: SENDING & RECEIVING
- When you email the court about your case, please make sure to include in the subject line of your email: the case number, the estate name, and the next court date.
- If you have submitted an agreed order continuing your case, you do not need to appear in Court for your originally scheduled hearing. You will likely not get a response to your email before your court date, but know that you do not need to appear unless you hear otherwise from the judge. Your order will be received and entered.
- We have been seeing a significant delay in receiving orders. It may take up to 5 business days after your court date to get your order. It may be sent to CVLS instead of to you. If we receive it, Katherine will send it along to you promptly.
- If you are missing an order from a recent court date, please email Katherine to let her know. We will do our best to obtain a copy of your order for you.
- Going forward, if you do not receive your order from the Court or from us after 5 business days, contact the clerk from 1806 at probatecrt1806orders@cookcountycourt.com.
- If you do not hear back from the clerk within 2 business days, email the following people in one email: nrshaw@cookcountycourt.com, tzmiller@cookcountycourt.com, beanaele@cookcountycourt.com, and probatedivservices@cookcounty.com (the court clerk manager, the assistant chief deputy clerk, and the chief deputy clerk).
HELPFUL RESOURCES
The Court recently distributed a Reference Guide for Virtual Hearings. You can find it here.
Finally, we wanted to share with you some extremely helpful instructions for pro se parties on how to download and use Zoom, prepared by our wonderful team of volunteers at Quarles & Brady – thank you! You can find them here. Feel free to distribute them to the parties in your cases.
Thank you for your hard work and for your patience as we all figure this out together! Please let us know if you have any questions.