“DL-21 to be prepared” is a status you may see on your Pennsylvania driving record or court paperwork. It means a DL-21 form related to your license suspension, restoration, or conviction has been triggered by a court order but has not yet been completed and sent to the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT). In short, the paperwork is pending.
What a DL-21 Form Actually Is
The DL-21 is a family of forms used in Pennsylvania to communicate information between courts, drivers, ignition interlock vendors, and PennDOT. Different versions serve different purposes. The DL-21CF, for example, is completed by a Clerk of Courts after a judge issues an order related to your driving privileges, typically involving a license suspension under Pennsylvania’s Vehicle Code. The DL-21SC is a self-certification form you fill out when you’re eligible for license restoration, declaring which vehicles you’ll operate or confirming you don’t own a vehicle.
When you see “to be prepared,” it refers to the DL-21CF version in most cases. The court has a reason to generate the form (a conviction, a completed sentence, or a court order), but the clerk’s office hasn’t finalized and transmitted it to PennDOT yet.
Why the Form Gets Triggered
Two common situations cause a Clerk of Courts to prepare a DL-21CF:
- Court orders under 75 Pa.C.S.A. § 1541 (Act 122): These are orders suspending your license for failure to pay fines, costs, or restitution. Once a judge signs the order, the clerk must complete the DL-21CF and submit it to PennDOT.
- Completion of alternative sentencing (Act 151): If you’ve finished a term of house arrest with electronic monitoring, a partial confinement program, or incarceration, the Adult Probation Office verifies completion. The clerk then processes the DL-21CF to notify PennDOT that you’ve satisfied the requirement.
In both scenarios, the form is the mechanism that officially updates your status with PennDOT. Until it’s prepared and submitted, PennDOT’s records won’t reflect the change.
What “To Be Prepared” Means for Your License
This status is essentially a holding pattern. If the DL-21CF is being prepared because of a new suspension order, your license may already be suspended or about to be. If it’s being prepared because you’ve completed a requirement and are eligible for restoration, it means the paperwork confirming that hasn’t reached PennDOT yet, so your license won’t be restored until it does.
Either way, you cannot drive on a suspended license while waiting for a form to process. The “to be prepared” status does not grant you any interim driving privileges.
How Long Processing Takes
There’s no single guaranteed timeline. The speed depends on how quickly the Clerk of Courts completes the form and how fast PennDOT processes it once received. Court clerks’ offices vary in their turnaround, some completing forms within days of a court order and others taking several weeks, particularly in counties with heavy caseloads.
Once PennDOT receives the form, mail-based processing for driving record updates generally takes 15 to 21 business days. If you’re waiting for restoration, the total delay from court order to an updated driving record could stretch to a month or longer.
What You Can Do While Waiting
If you’re seeing “DL-21 to be prepared” and you believe you’ve satisfied all requirements for restoration, your first call should be to the Clerk of Courts in the county where your case was handled. Ask whether the DL-21CF has been completed and when it was (or will be) sent to PennDOT. If there’s a holdup, it’s almost always at the county court level rather than at PennDOT.
If the form relates to restoration after a DUI or interlock requirement, you may also need to complete the DL-21SC, the self-certification form. This is a separate step where you declare which vehicles you’ll drive, confirm an ignition interlock device has been installed, or certify that you don’t own a vehicle. The interlock vendor completes part of the form and sends it to PennDOT on your behalf.
You can check the current status of your driving record through PennDOT’s online services or by calling their Driver Licensing Information line. If the DL-21CF has been received and processed, your record will reflect the updated status. If it still shows “to be prepared,” the form hasn’t arrived yet, and following up with the court clerk is your best next step.
DL-21 vs. DL-21SC vs. DL-21CF
The naming can be confusing. Here’s the quick breakdown:
- DL-21CF: Completed by the Clerk of Courts and sent to PennDOT. This is the form most people encounter when they see “to be prepared” on their record. It reports court actions like suspensions or sentence completions.
- DL-21SC: Completed by you (and partly by an ignition interlock vendor) when you’re eligible for license restoration. It certifies what vehicles you’ll operate or that your vehicles are inoperable or that you don’t own one.
Both forms feed into the same restoration process, but they come from different directions. The DL-21CF is the court’s responsibility. The DL-21SC is yours. If your restoration requires both, neither one alone will get your license back.