2-1602.Revival of judgment.

Section 2-1602 supplies the procedure that Section 2-1601 promises: instead of the old scire facias writ, a judgment creditor revives a judgment by filing a petition to revive in the same case. Outside the consumer-debt rules discussed below, a petition may be filed in the seventh year after the judgment’s entry, in the seventh year after its last revival, in the twentieth year after entry, or at any other point within twenty years of entry once the judgment has gone dormant. Reviving the judgment requires filing the petition, serving it, and obtaining a court order granting revival.

Consumer debt judgments follow a different, tiered timeline. The statute defines “consumer debt” as money or property owed by a natural person for a personal, family, or household transaction, and a “consumer debt judgment” as a judgment against one or more natural persons arising from that kind of debt, excluding compensation for bodily injury or death and excluding any judgment where the debt is guaranteed by, or contains a joint and several liability provision between, a natural person and a business. A judgment entered before January 1, 2020 is not treated as a consumer debt judgment and follows the general revival rules. A consumer debt judgment entered between January 1, 2020 and the day before the current amendatory Act’s effective date may be revived only by petition filed no later than ten years after entry. A consumer debt judgment entered on or after that effective date cannot be revived at all — it instead remains enforceable for fifteen years after entry without any revival step.

The petition itself must recite the original judgment’s date and amount, the court costs expended, accrued interest, and any credits already applied, and it must be served under Illinois Supreme Court Rule 106. A successful revival order restores the judgment for its original amount, and the creditor may still recover interest and costs running from the date of the original judgment, with credits reflected later in supplementary proceedings or execution. The statute also addresses several edge cases: when a judgment debtor’s bankruptcy case leaves a lien on property unresolved, revival reaches only that property; a judgment may be revived against fewer than all the original debtors, with that partial order treated as final and appealable; and the revival requirement does not apply to child-support judgments or to judgments for the kind of injury described in Section 13-214.1, which may be enforced at any time under Section 12-108.

The section also protects an enforcement proceeding already under way: if a judgment goes dormant while a wage-related enforcement proceeding is pending under Part 14 of this Article or under Article XII, that proceeding may run to conclusion — including a wage deduction or turnover order against an employer, garnishee, or other third-party respondent — without pausing for a separate revival, so long as a court supervises it.