Electronic Signatures in Illinois

Illinois did not adopt the national UATE legislation that most states adopted to allow electronic signatures. The state did, however, adopt its own e-signature legislation back in 1998. The problem is that there hasn’t been much in the way of case law to determine whether or not these can be attacked as valid in any way. If all of the recordable documents are being wet-signed, then that covers us from a title insurance perspective. The validity of the other documents in the loan package that are not insured in any way fall outside of our realm and are better questions for the lender’s legal department (which may very well be the ones asking you the question).

So I can’t really render any opinion here and would avoid it yourself if you can, but the short answer is that Illinois has a statute that recognizes it (205 ILCS 705), it’s just not the same as the UATE that most other states adopted. That could be the source of the conflicting information.