Q. The tenants above us create a lot of noise. It is unbelievable. When they play their stereo, it overwhelms our unit. A child jumps on the floors repeatedly, causing items hanging on our walls to shift. We operate a home-based business and find it very difficult to concentrate on phone calls.

We tried to reason with the adult male in the apartment upstairs, but he says they are entitled to listen to their music. After we complained to the landlord, the noise got louder. What rights do we have to force the landlord to deal with this?

A. Some neighbors are inconsiderate. There is not a whole lot you can do to force either tenant or landlord to cooperate with you. Your landlord has the power to cancel the upstairs neighbor's lease, but he has no obligation to do so.

Maybe offering to assist the landlord in finding a replacement upstairs tenant might entice him to act. As an alternative, could you find a sublet tenant for yourselves and move elsewhere?

There are both statutory and common laws dealing with nuisances such as noise, but these are expensive and slippery to privately pursue. It will take expensive testimony from technical experts to prove a sound level nuisance condition.

Existing noise laws enforced by local government relate mostly to loud sounds detected on the public way, or whether sounds coming from another property interfere with the typical level of conversation.

Chicago also regulates the sound level allowable from a bar into the rest of a building, but your neighbor is not regulated. If the police could hear the sounds from the street, they might caution your neighbor.

Neither the landlord nor the upstairs neighbor has the right to interfere with your "peaceful use and enjoyment" of your rental. "Peaceful" relates primarily to not physically invading your private space and to not stopping you from using the space. If the neighbor were participating in the noise for the dedicated purpose of causing you harm, the courts or the police might be more sympathetic to a charge of intentional harassment.

Your lease is for residential use and not business, so the noise disturbance to your phone calls might be an admission you are breaking the lease, and irrelevant in court.

Send questions to Ed Sacks at Apartment Watch, Homelife, Chicago Sun-Times, 350 N. Orleans, Chicago, IL 60654, or e-mail www.apartmentwatch@earthlink.net.