The Illinois Armed Forces Legal Aid Network (
IL-AFLAN
) was created by the State of Illinois to provide wide-scale civil legal aid to veterans, military service members and their families. Veterans face some of the toughest challenges in navigating the justice system to protect their livelihoods, health, housing and families.
IL-AFLAN Staff Attorney Steve Prout, Supervising Attorney Karla Chrobak, Staff Attorney
Mary Jo Rosso, and Paralegal Kenny Bahena hold donations for homeless veterans
In Illinois alone, there are nearly 800,000 veterans and military service members and an additional 20,000+ dependents (of service members who were deployed between 9/11/01- 5/31/15, according to
Ilaflan.org
). There is simply a great need to bridge these groups through legal aid, and IL-AFLAN aims to accomplish this.
Consider Bob, a veteran who lives in central Illinois and is very active at his VFW (the Veterans of Foreign Wars) post. He had a boarder in his house, but the living situation became difficult and unsafe for Bob. The boarder was threatening him and banging on his door at night. He called the IL-AFLAN hotline for legal advice on how to evict the boarder conscientiously. Steve Prout, a CARPLS Staff Attorney on the IL-AFLAN hotline, talked him through the steps over the course of about six months. “He successfully filed an eviction lawsuit and had the tenant leave the house,” Steve says. “We also helped him when the tenant left behind personal property. He got his life back to normal and now has peace of mind.”
IL-AFLAN attorneys do everything they can to search for a solution for every client. Really, IL-AFLAN may be the best kept secret in legal aid.
