Which place’s debt rules apply—and who can help?

S_IL PASS-02 — Targeted statutory and fee-rule evidence recovery

Baseline: October 22, 2026, Pacific. Actual access: October 22, 2026, PDT, corresponding to October 23, 2026, UTC.

Result and acceptance boundary

This pass recovered primary enacted text for original §§125(a)–(d), 135(a)–(d), and 145(9)–(10). It did not recover a freshly readable current codification or a complete subsequent amendment chain for those provisions. The recovery improves the evidence supporting the original statutory language; it does not close the coordinator’s current-law verification hold.

Fresh official agency and executive material also confirms that HB5384 became P.A. 104-0520 on June 26, 2026, with immediate effectiveness reported by the Governor. The requested operative passages—current §78 and Public Act §§15, 25, and 99—remain unread because the attempted official routes failed or stopped before those passages. Office of Legislative Affairs+1

The substantive changes to the research record are:

No classification overview, federal overview, or fee-arithmetic rerun is included. No Illinois-wide or A066 acceptance is implied.

Identifier convention: Within this answer, S001 and C001 mean S_IL-P2-S001 and S_IL-P2-C001. Earlier records retain their full S_IL-P1-… identifiers.

A. Substantive findings

1. Section 125: original operative wording recovered; current version not cleared

The successful primary recovery was the Illinois General Assembly’s HTML publication of P.A. 96-1420. The displayed passage contained all of original §125(a)–(d).

Claims C001–C002; source S001, §125(a)–(d).

The recovered original enactment has no §125(e). PASS-01 reported a successful read of the later current section, including the student-loan provision associated with P.A. 102-298. That earlier read remains prior evidence; the 2010 document cannot be presented as the complete later version.

Accordingly, the earlier $50, 15%, baseline, and collection-trigger findings are historically corroborated but not newly cleared as current-law premises by PASS-02. The failed current fetches also do not prove those earlier findings false.

2. Section 135: the refund language is now supported by a primary enactment

Cancellation and refund triggers

The recovered original §135 provides:

• Subsection (a): cancellation before the provider has fully performed every service it contracted or represented it would perform.
• Subsection (b): cancellation or a material violation of the Act triggers the stated refund obligation. The text requires return of fees and compensation, subject to its exceptions for the “application fee” and earned settlement fees, together with accumulated consumer settlement funds not disbursed to creditors.
• Cancellation also revokes and voids the consumer’s powers of attorney and direct-debit authorizations.
• Subsection (d): the provider must give timely cancellation notice to creditors it previously contacted for the consumer in connection with the settlement services.

These are now actual primary-enactment findings, rather than findings resting only on the supplied secondary reproduction. Currentness remains a separate, unresolved dependency. C003; S001 §135(a), (b), (d).

Five-business-day deadline: preserve the exact anchor

Original §135(c) requires the refund:

“within 5 business days after the notice of cancellation”

It also requires an accompanying account statement showing fees received and refunded, savings held and refunded, creditor payments, and any earned settlement fees. C004; S001 §135(c).

Two qualifications matter:

1. The passage does not expressly say “after receipt.” This investigation did not locate a controlling or formal official interpretation choosing dispatch, delivery, receipt, or another event as the meaning of the notice language.
2. The material-violation trigger and deadline anchor are different clauses. Subsection (b) addresses refunds upon a material violation, while subsection (c) states a deadline measured from cancellation notice. The recovered text does not expressly establish a separate five-day clock beginning with the violation, its discovery, or provider knowledge.

A violation-only deadline should therefore not be invented from the cancellation-notice clause. C006, C015.

“Application fee” is not automatically interchangeable with “enrollment fee”

The same enacted document uses different terms:

The primary recovery confirms the mismatch. It does not resolve it.

Reading the recovered provisions together supports an important boundary: a refund exception does not itself create authority to charge an additional fee when §125 specifies the permitted fee types. But no controlling decision, formal agency ruling, or formal official explanation was located establishing that §135’s application-fee exception necessarily means the $50 enrollment charge.

Therefore this pass does not:

• Authorize a second consumer “application fee.”
• Treat the provider’s regulator-facing application charge as a consumer charge.
• Label the $50 enrollment fee categorically nonrefundable.
• Treat a contract’s label as proof that a fee is legally earned.

C005, C015. The precise retention question remains held pending current text and authoritative reconciliation.

3. Section 145(9)–(10): two distinct restrictions were recovered

The original enactment contains both provisions, but they regulate different conduct.

C007–C008; S001 §145 introductory clause and paragraphs (9)–(10).

The stated purpose condition in paragraph (9) must remain in the claim. Paragraph (10) should not be rewritten as a generic provision addressing every payment to every intermediary.

The separate customer-referral restrictions reported from Part 145 in PASS-01 remain a prior-evidence dependency, not a freshly reread rule finding in this pass.

Currentness remains material: official discovery results identify P.A. 102-298 as a later amendment to §145, but the relevant enacted or current passage could not be freshly opened. This investigation consequently does not approve a third-party-funded arrangement or certify that the original paragraphs are unchanged through the baseline. C009.

4. Section 78 and P.A. 104-520: enactment established; exact scope still held

What fresh primary material establishes

The actually read IDFPR Office of Legislative Affairs page identifies:

• HB5384;
• P.A. 104-0520;
• Signing on June 26, 2026; and
• Authority to promulgate licensing fees related to the Financial Institutions Fund through administrative rule.

The Governor’s June 26 announcement separately identifies HB5384 as signed and effective immediately. C010; S002–S003. Office of Legislative Affairs+1

These are substantive enactment confirmations. They do not supply the requested statutory clauses.

What was not recovered

The agency’s description emphasizes licensing fees. The Governor’s description speaks more generally about fees in the affected Acts being amendable by rule. PASS-01 also reported actually reading DMSA §6.5, including its broader subsection (b). Those descriptions and that prior read must not be silently converted into a fresh read of settlement §78.

This pass does not decide that §78 is limited exclusively to licensing fees, nor that it authorizes alteration of every consumer-fee provision. Exact operative scope remains held. C011.

Enactment is not a numerical fee change

The evidence recovered establishes enacted rulemaking authority, not a new consumer fee schedule. No actual implementing consumer-fee amendment was established. No automatic CPI mechanism, replacement dollar figure, altered percentage, or new collection-timing permission is inferred. C011–C013.

5. Actual adopted 2026 rule examined: administrative hearings

A targeted search produced a genuine adopted 2026 rule mentioning both debt statutes. Its actual notice and operative passages were read.

It is the amendment to:

38 Ill. Adm. Code Part 100 — Hearings Before the Division of Banking and Division of Financial Institutions, published at 50 Ill. Reg. 10803, effective July 13, 2026.

The adopted-action list names changes to §§100.10, .15, .30, .50, .70, .90, .100, .120, .130, .140, .210, and .250. The operative passages concern hearing definitions, language assistance, petitions, representation, default, discovery, subpoenas, documents, and orders. Both debt Acts appear in the definition of an applicable Act, explaining the search result. C012; S004. ilsos.gov+2

This adoption does not establish a change to settlement enrollment/success fees or DMP consumer charges. “Hearing Fee” and “Cost of Hearings” appear in the Part’s contents, but those sections are not in this adoption’s amended-section list.

The broader conclusion remains bounded: no adopted 2026 change to the requested consumer-fee limits was established in this investigation. The newly read index and issue listing are leads; they are not substituted for operative fee text. The prior checks of Register issues 39–42 remain attributed to PASS-01.

6. DMSA §12 and cancellation: no fresh statutory recovery

Fresh attempts to retrieve 205 ILCS 665/12 failed.

The prior PASS-01 read reported an exhaustive list of permitted debtor fees and penalties, with no separate exit penalty. That earlier evidence remains attributed to PASS-01; it is not newly reverified here.

The earlier cancellation proposition also requires a clearer dependency split:

• The first-day-of-the-following-month cancellation date came from 38 Ill. Adm. Code 140.50(b)(2)–(3).
• The absence of a separately authorized cancellation penalty depended on the previously read §12 and Rule 140.50(c)(2).
• Section 12 itself did not establish that cancellation date, a general refund deadline, or a daily-proration formula.

C014. Part 140.60/.70 and current application checklists remain open. C016.

No new arithmetic examples are added. The supplied arithmetic check does not cure these current-law evidence gaps.

B. Actual source register — successfully read primary passages

Only sources whose relevant substantive passages were actually returned and read in PASS-02 appear here. Failed routes, indexes, and inherited evidence are separated below. All access dates are October 22, 2026 PDT / October 23 UTC.

C. Failed and partial retrieval routes — not substantive sources

These are material PASS-02 access attempts. They are recorded as retrieval evidence, not as proof of statutory contents. Repeated identical failures are consolidated.

No broader permissions, alternate browser access, or contact was requested to overcome these failures.

D. Discovery leads and prior-evidence dependency crosswalk

D1. Freshly checked discovery aids — not operative fee authority

D2. Earlier evidence reused with attribution — not fresh PASS-02 reading

E. PASS-02 claim table

F. Earlier-claim patch map — original IDs retained

This is an appended qualification and evidence map. It does not alter or silently replace the raw original claim records.

G. Component coverage and exact remaining investigations

H. Researcher self-check

• Actual new primary text: The original enacted §125(a)–(d), full §135, and original §145(9)–(10) were displayed and read during the parallel research within this pass. Subsequent attempts to reopen that same document failed; those failures do not erase the successful read.
• Actual new current official explanations: IDFPR’s legislative page and the Governor’s announcement were read, establishing the reported enactment facts without substituting those pages for unread statutory clauses.
• Actual adopted-rule examination: The Part100 adoption’s action list, effective date, and relevant operative passages were examined. Its debt-statute references did not make it a consumer-fee amendment.
• Still not read: Current target settlement sections, the requested P.A.104-520 operative clauses, current DMSA§12, Part140.60/.70, and current checklist contents.
• Interpretive limits: The bounded searches did not locate a controlling or formal official resolution of the refund terminology or notice-anchor questions. Complaints, the identified law-review material, and search excerpts were not treated as controlling interpretations. Subsequent-history verification remains incomplete.
• Attribution: Prior PASS-01 reads and supplied coordinator checks are explicitly distinguished from fresh reading. This is a researcher self-check, not independent review.
• Environment: Ordinary public-web retrieval was used in this conversation. No alternate browser access or broader permissions were requested. The chatgpt.com model selector was not verified, and no claim is made to have changed it.

Continuation boundary: The original-enactment text gap is substantially improved. The current-codification/amendment-chain, exact 2026 authority, interpretive, rule, and checklist holds remain open as listed above.

END S_IL PASS-02