Legal Question in Landlord & Tenant Law in Illinois

If what you are saying is that you received something like a landlord's notice and the period expired and the landlord then filed the actual eviction case but never made any kind of valid service of process on you, the first step normally would be to go to the trial court, move to vacate any existing judgment, stay execution of the order, and defend there. Of course you may not know if valid service of process was made and the first thing to do would be to check the court file for the return of service to see what the situation is; you may have been served via a third party or by posting and may not have been made aware of it, especially if there was no money judgment asked for. If you don't exhaust your trial court options, an appeal may be a loser. If you can afford an attorney get one immediately to review the situation, and if not there are several especially for Chicago evictions who will handle the case pro bono or on the assumption the landlord screwed something else up too and may be liable for some kind of damages to you.