Legal Question in Constitutional Law in Illinois

Holding a litigant in default, or simply being in default, can mean the litigant failed to file some court paper by a required date, or to appear for a particular phase of the litigation, or something else the litigant didn't do. That does NOT mean that you necessarily have a judgment in your favor based on the default. Normally you have to ask the court for entry of an actual default judgment AND in many situations you will have to "prove-up" your case (like a trial but one-sided with the defaulted litigant not there). Further, default judgments normally have to be served on the defaulted party, and then the party as upwards of 30-90 days to come back to court, reopen the default, and pick up where things left off. And then again sometimes it can mean the same thing, but only a review of the court records would confirm this.