Illinois gives creditors ten years to sue on a written contract and five years on an unwritten one. The ten-year period in 735 ILCS 5/13-206 is among the longest deadlines in the country, roughly triple New York‘s three-year period for consumer credit. Which of the two applies to a credit card balance is the question that matters here, and the Illinois code does not answer it.
The deadlines, and where each one is written
| What is being collected | Deadline to file suit | Statute |
|---|---|---|
| Written contract, promissory note, or other written evidence of indebtedness | 10 years | 735 ILCS 5/13-206 |
| Unwritten contract, express or implied | 5 years | 735 ILCS 5/13-205 |
| All civil actions not otherwise provided for | 5 years | 735 ILCS 5/13-205 |
| Sale of goods | 4 years | 810 ILCS 5/2-725 |
| Debt from a municipal ordinance violation | 7 years from adjudication | 735 ILCS 5/13-227 |
An oddity worth knowing if you are comparing Illinois to other states: subsections (a) and (b) of Illinois’s version of UCC § 3-118, the provisions that give promissory notes a six-year period in most states, read simply “(Blank)” in 810 ILCS 5/3-118. Illinois deliberately left them empty because § 13-206 already covers notes at ten years. Citing six years for an Illinois note imports a rule the state chose not to adopt.
Five years or ten? The question the code does not answer
Illinois runs a two-tier scheme: written contracts get ten years, unwritten contracts get five. There is no third category. We enumerated every section of Article XIII, and the code contains no provision for an account stated, an open account, a book account, or a mutual account, and no section anywhere names credit cards, revolving credit, or consumer debt.
What this means in practice: in Illinois the written-versus-unwritten question is worth five years, which is a larger swing than in any other state we have covered. It generally turns on whether the creditor can produce a signed cardholder agreement putting the balance in the ten-year written category. That allocation comes from court decisions, not from the statute, so treat a flat “Illinois credit card debt is ten years” or “five years” as an approximation rather than something you can read out of the code.
What the deadline does, and what it does not do
The limitations period governs how long someone has to file suit. Illinois bars the remedy rather than the debt. The statutes are written as commencement bars, and two other provisions confirm the obligation survives: § 13-207 lets a defendant plead a time-barred set-off defensively, and the revival clause discussed below expressly contemplates an action being commenced after the ten years have run. Credit reporting runs on a separate federal clock, generally seven years for most negative account information under the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
What restarts the clock in Illinois
Illinois has no standalone revival statute. The rule sits in the closing clause of § 13-206 itself:
but if any payment or new promise to pay has been made, in writing, on any bond, note, bill, lease, contract, or other written evidence of indebtedness, within or after the period of 10 years, then an action may be commenced thereon at any time within 10 years after the time of such payment or promise to pay.
Three things follow from that text. A writing is required. A signature is not: the word “signed” does not appear, which distinguishes Illinois from states like Texas, California, and Florida, whose revival statutes require a signed writing. And the clause permits revival “within or after the period of 10 years,” so unlike New York, Illinois allows an expired claim to be brought back.
What the sentence does not settle is whether the phrase “in writing” attaches to a payment as well as to a new promise. Read one way, a bare payment with no accompanying writing would not revive the debt; read another, it would. That is a question of construction the statute leaves open, and we are not going to assert an answer it does not supply. Note also that the clause reaches only written evidences of indebtedness, so it provides no revival rule at all for the five-year unwritten category.
Illinois debt collection statute of limitations: the debt buyer rule
Illinois has one provision directly on point, and it is easy to miss because the Collection Agency Act was renumbered: it now sits at 205 ILCS 740, and older sources citing 225 ILCS 425 are pointing at a dead location. Section 8.6(a) provides:
Debt buyers initiating actions upon an obligation arising out of a consumer debt shall be commenced within the applicable statute of limitations period.
That duty binds debt buyers specifically, not original creditors and not contingency collectors, and it operates through the licensing act, with Attorney General enforcement available as an unlawful practice. Section 9(24) separately makes it a disciplinary offense to attempt or threaten “to enforce a right or remedy with knowledge or reason to know that the right or remedy does not exist,” though that provision does not mention limitations periods.
One trap for anyone searching the code themselves: 205 ILCS 740/9.5 is titled “Statute of limitations,” but it has nothing to do with old consumer debt. It sets a five-year limit on actions against licensees for violations of the Act.
Beyond § 8.6(a), Illinois adds little. We read the Act’s validation-of-debts section in full; its required disclosures cover the amount, the creditor’s name, the thirty-day dispute window, verification, and the original creditor’s address. Illinois requires no notice telling a consumer that a debt is too old to sue on, unlike California, New York, and Texas.
How often Illinois consumers report collection problems
Illinois consumers filed 11,131 debt collection complaints with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in the 12 months ending August 26, 2026, which is 3.4% of the 323,584 filed nationwide and ranks 8th among reporting states.
Of those, 1,956, or 18% of the Illinois total, were categorized as a collector taking or threatening to take negative or legal action. That share runs below the national figure of 25%, which is notable given how long Illinois creditors have to file.
These are raw complaint counts, not rates. They are not adjusted for population, and a complaint is an allegation the CFPB has published, not a finding that a company broke the law. The figures refresh weekly from the CFPB’s public database.
If you are sued on a debt you believe is too old
Limitations is an affirmative defense you have to raise. Under 735 ILCS 5/2-613(d), a defendant must plead affirmatively “any defense which by other affirmative matter seeks to avoid the legal effect of or defeat the cause of action.” The court will not apply the deadline for you, so failing to answer can produce a default judgment on an expired debt.
Given the ten-year period, an Illinois account can be genuinely old and still be within the deadline, which makes the date arithmetic worth doing carefully rather than assuming an old debt is safe. If you do decide to pay something on an old Illinois account, understand that a written payment or promise can start a fresh ten-year period. Court deadlines are unforgiving, so this is a point at which speaking with an Illinois attorney or a legal aid organization is worth the call.
How Illinois compares
Three states worth reading next to Illinois, because each shares or inverts one of its rules:
- Missouri: the other ten-year written period
- Iowa: ten years written, five unwritten
- West Virginia: ten years on a signed writing
The full comparison table covers every state we have published.
Sources and verification
Statutes quoted from the Illinois Compiled Statutes published by the Illinois General Assembly: 735 ILCS 5/13-206 (P.A. 95-209), 735 ILCS 5/13-205 (P.A. 82-280), 5/13-207 (P.A. 102-908), 5/13-227 (P.A. 102-192), 5/2-613 (P.A. 84-624), 810 ILCS 5/3-118 (P.A. 90-451), 810 ILCS 5/2-725, and the Collection Agency Act at 205 ILCS 740/8.6 (P.A. 97-1070) and 740/9, /9.3. The General Assembly publishes no “current through” date for the Compiled Statutes, stating instead that updating the database “is an ongoing process” and that changes are sometimes included before they take effect, so each provision above is identified by its own public act line and the text was retrieved August 26, 2026. Complaint data: CFPB Consumer Complaint Database, filtered to the Debt collection product and the Illinois state field over a rolling 12-month window, re-queried weekly by this site. Our data sources and update policy lists every figure on this site that refreshes automatically and how often.
This page explains what the Illinois statutes say, and says so where they say nothing. It is general information, not legal advice. In particular, whether a specific credit card balance falls in the ten-year or five-year category is decided by case law that this page does not attempt to summarize.
Frequently asked questions
How long can a debt collector pursue an old debt in Illinois?
A collector may contact you indefinitely, but the deadline to sue is ten years on a written contract under 735 ILCS 5/13-206 and five years on an unwritten one under 5/13-205. Illinois’s ten-year written-contract period is among the longest in the country.
Is Illinois credit card debt five years or ten years?
The code does not say. Illinois has only a written category and an unwritten category, and no section anywhere names credit cards, revolving credit, or accounts stated. Which category a balance falls into is decided by the courts and generally turns on whether the creditor can produce a signed cardholder agreement.
Does making a payment restart the statute of limitations in Illinois?
Section 13-206 restarts the ten-year period when a payment or new promise to pay has been made “in writing,” and it permits this within or after the original period, so an expired Illinois debt can be revived. The statute does not require a signature, and it leaves unresolved whether a payment made without any accompanying writing has the same effect.
Can a time-barred debt still appear on my Illinois credit report?
Yes. Illinois bars the lawsuit rather than extinguishing the debt, and it requires no notice telling you a debt is too old to sue on. Credit reporting runs on a separate federal clock, generally seven years for most negative account information.