personal loan

You need to sue your friend, but you may have a problem.  When was repayment due?  The New York statute of limitations on breach of contract is 6 years, but the period is shorter in many jurisdictions (I don't know about Illinois.)  Thus, if this was governed by NY law and repayment was due more than 6 years ago (meaning the contract was breached more than 6 years ago), the statute of limitations would have run out, and your claim would be barred. If repayment was not due until a date within the statute of limitations, for example one year ago, you could have another problem.  The statute of frauds in most states requires that any contract which cannot be performed within one year must be in writing.  You say that this was an oral contract, not a written one (although, if the check had any details of the contract on it, for example writing saying "repayment due in 2 years" on the memo line, that might be a sufficient writing.)  If your verbal contract was that the loan would not be repaid until 2013, you would probably be within the statute of limitations, but might have a problem with the statute of frauds.  However, if the deal was that payment could be made at any time, but no later than 2013, that would probably solve the statute of frauds problem, since the contract COULD have been performed within one year from its making in 2007. If no date is set for repayment of a loan, the Courts will infer a "reasonable time" to repay, and the breach would occur after that "reasonable time" passes, but what a "reasonable time" is will differ depending on the circumstances.