Your License After a DUI Arrest

You’re holding a sheet of paper the officer handed you at the station along with your ticket. It’s the notice of summary suspension, and it means your driver’s license will be suspended soon, even though no judge has found you guilty of anything.

A DUI arrest starts two clocks at once. One is the criminal case. The other is your license, and that one moves first. The suspension takes effect on the 46th day after you got that notice. You have 90 days from the same date to file a petition asking a judge to rescind it. The License Clock on this page works out both dates from your arrest date.^{3, 4}

The clock and the tables are estimates, not legal advice. They assume the notice was handed to you at the arrest. If it came later by mail, after a blood or urine result, your dates run from that notice instead.

How Long Will My License Be Suspended?

The length depends on two things: whether you failed a test or refused one, and whether you count as a first offender.¹

A “failed test” means a breath or blood result of 0.08 or more, a THC level over the legal limit, or certain drugs in your system. You’re a first offender only if you’ve never had a DUI conviction or DUI court supervision and haven’t had a summary suspension in the 5 years before this arrest.² A refusal after a crash that injured or killed someone leads to a revocation, which follows different rules.

Your Deadlines, Counted From the Notice

Count the day the officer handed you the notice as day zero. The suspension takes effect on day 46, about six and a half weeks later, and the last day to file a petition to rescind is day 90, about three months later. The License Clock on this page counts both dates for you from your arrest date.

What the Rescission Hearing Looks Like

The petition is a written request for a hearing in the circuit court where your DUI ticket is filed. It runs like a civil case. The petition has to state its grounds, and the law limits the hearing to four questions:⁴

1. Were you arrested for DUI, shown by a DUI ticket?
2. Did the officer have reasonable grounds to believe you were driving, or in actual physical control of a vehicle, while impaired?
3. If the suspension is for a refusal, were you warned about the consequences, and did you actually refuse?
4. If it’s for a failed test, were you warned, and did the test show a result over the limit?

The judge can decide the hearing from the officer’s own reports, but we can subpoena the officer to testify. Then the officer answers questions under oath about the stop, the roadside tests and the warnings, and that testimony stays on the record for the criminal case. At the end, the judge sustains the suspension or rescinds it.

I handled roughly a thousand of these hearings from the State’s side, for the DuPage County State’s Attorney and the Village of Downers Grove. I know which parts of the sworn report the State relies on, and where the paperwork and the video can disagree. A hearing to challenge the suspension can turn on small details, like the time on the notice or which box the officer checked.

Driving During the Suspension: MDDP and BAIID

If you’re a first offender, the Secretary of State mails you a notice about a monitoring device driving permit, called an MDDP.⁵ It lets you drive for any purpose, at any time, in a vehicle with a breath alcohol ignition interlock device (BAIID), a small breath tester wired into the ignition.

A few rules come with it:

• The ignition interlock device has to be installed within 14 days after the permit is issued, at your expense.
• The state fee is up to $30 a month, plus the installer’s charges. If you qualify as indigent, the device is installed without charge.
• You can’t drive a commercial vehicle on an MDDP. An employer-owned vehicle may be allowed without a device if your employer fills out the state’s form and the Secretary of State approves it.
• Tampering with the device or blowing over the limit too many times can extend your suspension by 3 months for each violation.

An MDDP isn’t available if you’re under 18, if someone suffered great bodily harm or died, or if your license was otherwise invalid. Repeat offenders can’t get one at all.

Why Filing Early Matters

The petition doesn’t pause the suspension.⁴ It goes into effect on day 46 whether or not you’ve filed. The court has to hold the hearing within 30 days after it receives your request or within 30 days after the first court date on your ticket. File in the first few weeks, and the hearing may happen before the suspension starts. File on day 89, and the suspension is already running while you wait for a ruling.

Filing early also gives us time to request the squad video, the sworn report and the breath test records before the officer testifies.

Call Me Before Day 90

Call me at (630) 261-9098 with your notice in hand. We’ll find the date on it, count forward to day 46 and day 90, and decide whether a petition makes sense in your case. If the window has already closed, call anyway. We can still talk through the MDDP and how the criminal case affects your license.