With the exception of two provisions relating to minors, Illinois Supreme Court’s Rule 138 pertaining to identity theft protections goes into effect today

With the exception of two provisions, Illinois Supreme Court Rule 138, amended to protect against identity theft and the disclosure of sensitive information through electronic filing, goes into effect Monday, July 1 2013. Thus, starting today, social security numbers and taxpayer-identification numbers, driver’s license numbers, financial account numbers, and debit and credit card numbers must be excluded from any documents and from all exhibits filed in civil cases, which includes mortgage foreclosures and collection proceedings.
The requirement that birth dates and the names of minor individuals be excluded from documents in civil cases has been deferred until January 1, 2014. The delay will allow attorneys and state agencies that handle high volumes of affected cases additional time to adapt to the new requirements. In the interim, the Illinois Supreme Court Rules Committee will schedule a public hearing on the deferred provisions.
The Supreme Court, in response to additional inquiries from judges, practitioners, clerks and other court partners, also offered several clarifications of the scope of the Rule. For mortgage all civil actions, the relevant ones include the clarification i) that federal forms, such as the Income Withholding for Support and various IRS documents, which require information such as Social Security numbers, minor names and birth dates are to be completed with all information necessary to comply with federal requirements, filed confidentially, and transferred to appropriate justice partners consistent with paragraph (d). A redacted copy may be included in the public file; ii) that Rule 138 applies to personal identity information in all publicly accessible court records. It does not apply to publication of notice as required by certain statutes; and iii) that Rule 138 applies only to documents filed on or after the effective date.
The Court also announced that a template of the Notice of Personal Identity Information Within Court Filing will be forthcoming. A form similar to that attached to Supreme Court Rule 15 may be utilized in the interim.