Dear Customer,

Pursuant to 55 ILCS 5/3-5048, the McHenry County Clerk and Recorder’s Office is pleased to provide this guide to assist you with submitting a Restrictive Covenant Modification to an Unlawful Covenant for recording. This legislation authorizes our office to make these documents available, ensuring a clear and accessible process for property owners.

This guide will help you prepare the necessary documentation so your submission can be recorded promptly and with minimal inconvenience. If submitting by mail, we encourage you to include this worksheet with your submission, though it will not be recorded.

As always, if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to call.

Kindest Regards,

Joe Tirio – County Clerk and Recorder

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR PROPERTYOWNERS AND CONDOMINIUM AND UNIT OWNERS' ASSOCIATIONS

 Effective January 1, 2022, a new Illinois statute provides a specific procedure to modify illegal restrictive covenants that may still be included in the title documents for your homes, condominiums or housing units. Covenants at issue are those that prohibit the sale or lease to a property based on race, religion or natural origin, for example. These violate the Illinois Human Rights Act and have probably not been enforced in recent years but may still be part of the official title to your property or properties. Despite the lack of enforcement, you may want to have these covenants removed from your title documents. The statute now allows a simple procedure to modify a title document and re-record it with the illegal covenant deleted. The process can be initiated by an individual owner or a condominium 

Link to flyer announcing the May 18 presentation

Link to video recording of the May 18th presentation.

Link to shorter version of the video above

User Guide to Modification to restrictive covenants