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New Hampshire Creditor Claims
Support GuideNew Hampshire18 min read

New Hampshire Creditor Claims

New Hampshire's creditor clock runs from the original grant of administration, not from death. RSA 556:3 gives six months to exhibit a demand.

By Settled Editorial

New Hampshire starts the creditor clock at the original grant of administration. Not at the date of death, and not on the day a notice appears in the newspaper. RSA 556:3 gives a creditor six months from that grant to exhibit a demand to the administrator, and RSA 556:5 gives one year from the same grant to begin suit. Any page that describes a New Hampshire window running from the date of death is describing a different state.

A second rule sits inside the first six months and catches people who ported their thinking from Maine or Massachusetts. RSA 556:1 says no action against an administrator may even be begun during that stretch. Months zero through six are a period when a creditor must present the claim and cannot yet sue on it. This guide walks through that three-layer clock, what counts as exhibiting a demand, the separate two-year bar that shields real estate, who actually publishes notice, how a late claimant asks for more time, and what changes once the money runs short. Read it alongside the New Hampshire executor duties guide, the New Hampshire probate deadlines guide, and the New Hampshire debt payment priority guide. Confirm any date that touches your estate with the Circuit Court, Probate Division for the decedent's county or a licensed New Hampshire attorney.

One Word Before the Deadlines: Administrator

New Hampshire never adopted the Uniform Probate Code, so it does not use the phrase "personal representative." RSA 553:1 says the word administrator may include every person to whom the administration of an estate or the execution of a will may be granted. Administrator is the umbrella term, and executor describes the administrator a will named. Chapter 556 is written entirely in those words, and so are the court's own NHJB forms. Reading it any other way makes the statutes hard to match to the paperwork.

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The Grant of Administration Starts Every Clock

Three deadlines govern a New Hampshire claim, and two of them count from the same event: the day the Circuit Court, Probate Division made the original grant of administration.

RSA 556:3, titled Exhibition of Demand; Time, states that no action shall be sustained unless the demand was exhibited to the administrator within six months after the original grant of administration, exclusive of the time such administration may have been suspended.

RSA 556:1, titled No Action Within Six Months, Etc., states that no action shall be sustained against an administrator if begun within six months after the original grant of administration, nor unless the demand has been exhibited to the administrator and payment has been demanded.

RSA 556:5, titled Suit Within One Year, states that no suit shall be maintained against an administrator for any cause of action against the deceased unless it is begun within one year next after the original grant of administration, again leaving out any time the administration was suspended.

Two words in those sections carry weight. Original ties every period to the first grant, so replacing an administrator later in the case does not hand creditors a fresh clock. Suspended is the only pause New Hampshire builds in, and it stops the count while the administration itself is suspended, not while a creditor is busy.

QuestionNew Hampshire answerStatute
When does the claim window openOriginal grant of administrationRSA 556:3
How long to exhibit the demand6 monthsRSA 556:3
Can a creditor sue in those 6 monthsNoRSA 556:1
Deadline to begin suit1 year from the original grantRSA 556:5
Does anything pause the clockOnly time the administration was suspendedRSA 556:3, RSA 556:5
Can a court grant more timeYes, on a culpable-neglect standardRSA 556:28
Outer bar on reaching real estate2 years from the date of deathRSA 556:29

What Exhibiting a Demand Actually Means

New Hampshire routes an ordinary claim to the administrator, not to a court docket. Nothing in chapter 556 asks a creditor to file anything with the Probate Division to keep a plain debt alive. The one filing route the chapter does create is narrower, and it appears further down under claims that are not yet due.

RSA 556:2, titled Notice of Claim, gives a creditor a clean safe harbor: a notice sent to the administrator or the administrator's agent by registered mail, setting forth the nature and amount of the claim and a demand for payment, shall be deemed a sufficient exhibition and demand. Three elements have to be in that letter: what the debt is, how much it is, and a request for payment.

Two failure modes follow from the wording of RSA 556:1, which requires both that the demand was exhibited and that payment was demanded. An invoice mailed with no request for payment is incomplete. A phone call is unprovable. Registered mail with the receipt kept in the file answers both problems, and it fixes a date the estate cannot dispute later.

Administrators commonly log the postmark of every demand that arrives, because the six-month test is measured against the date of the original grant, not against the date the estate got around to opening the mail. That log sits naturally in the same file as the inventory and the accounts described in the New Hampshire executor duties guide.

The Six Months When Nobody Can Sue

RSA 556:1 shuts the courthouse door for half a year. A creditor who files suit in month four has not preserved anything, because the action cannot be sustained. The claim still has to be exhibited inside that same six months under RSA 556:3, so the two rules pull in opposite directions and both bind.

The sequence the statutes describe runs like this:

  1. The Probate Division makes the original grant of administration. That date is the anchor for everything below.
  2. The creditor sends a registered-mail notice of claim under RSA 556:2 stating the nature and amount of the debt and demanding payment, well inside six months.
  3. The administrator reviews the demand, checks it against the decedent's records, and either pays it or refuses it once the estate has the assets and the priority order allows.
  4. Months six through twelve are the creditor's window to sue if the demand went unpaid.
  5. One year after the original grant, RSA 556:5 closes suit for good, except in the narrow cases the statute itself carves out.

Those carve-outs matter to an administrator deciding whether an old claim is really dead. RSA 556:5 leaves the one-year bar aside where the administrator has retained estate in hand for payment of the claim by order of the judge, and in cases provided for by RSA 556:7 and RSA 556:28. RSA 556:7 covers a right of action that existed in favor of or against the deceased at death and survives, which may be brought by or against the administrator within one year after the original grant.

Late Claims and the Culpable Neglect Standard

A creditor who missed the statutory time is not automatically finished. RSA 556:28, titled Extension of Time, lets that person petition the court having subject matter jurisdiction over the nature of the claim, setting out all the facts. The court may extend the time for filing and prosecuting the claim to a date certain when two findings line up: justice and equity require it, and the claimant is not chargeable with culpable neglect in failing to bring or prosecute the claim within the time limited by law.

The section ends with a sentence that protects an administrator who acted in good faith. No such extension, and no judgment entered on the extended claim, shall affect any payments or compromises made before the beginning of the proceedings. An estate that paid a valid claim in month five does not have to claw it back because a different creditor won an extension in month fourteen.

The Two-Year Rule Is a Different Clock

RSA 556:29 is a separate clock from the six-month and one-year deadlines, and merging them is a common error. RSA 556:29, titled Two-Year Limitation, is the one New Hampshire creditor rule anchored to the date of death, and it does one narrow job. If no administration has been granted on the estate within two years from the date of death, no creditor may afterward maintain any action or proceeding to appropriate the real estate the deceased died seized of toward satisfaction of the claim.

Read what that sentence does and does not say. It protects real estate, not personal property. It runs from death, not from a grant. And it bites only when no estate was opened at all, which is why a family sitting on an unprobated house for years eventually reaches a point where creditors can no longer reach the land.

The transfer-on-death deed chapter mirrors the same limit. New Hampshire adopted the Uniform Real Property Transfer on Death Act in 2024, and RSA 563-D:16 makes property that passed by a transfer-on-death deed reachable to the extent the probate estate cannot satisfy an allowed claim, apportioned among several properties by their net values. Paragraph III then adds that if no administration is granted within two years of the transferor's death, no proceeding to enforce that liability may be commenced.

The Clerk Publishes the Notice, Not the Administrator

Executors arriving from other states expect to arrange a notice to creditors themselves and expect that advertisement to start the clock. New Hampshire does neither.

RSA 553:16, titled Publication of Notice of Appointment, puts the duty on the court: upon appointment of an administrator, the clerk shall, within 15 days of the appointment, cause notice of it to be published in accordance with RSA 550:10. The statute then waives publication entirely when the estate has a gross value of $10,000 or less.

Two consequences follow. First, the publication is a notice of appointment, not a notice to creditors, and no deadline in chapter 556 counts from it. Second, the $10,000 waiver is a publication threshold and nothing more. New Hampshire has no dollar-based small estate affidavit, and skipping publication in a small estate does not shorten or lengthen a creditor's six months.

Claims That Are Not Yet Due, and Claims Worth Settling

Not every debt is a fixed number payable today. RSA 556:6 handles the rest. Demands against an estate that are not yet due, and demands depending on a contingency, may be filed in the probate court. After due notice the judge may require the administrator to hold back enough money on settlement of the account to pay them, unless the widow, heirs, or legatees give bond to the judge for payment when the debt comes due or the contingency happens.

Disputed claims have their own route. RSA 556:27 lets the probate court authorize an administrator to adjust a controversy with a claimant by compromise or arbitration. Where an agreement between an executor and creditors, legatees, or heirs would touch a charitable interest, the attorney general or the director of the register of charitable trusts becomes a necessary party.

Personal Exposure for the Administrator

New Hampshire keeps ordinary estate litigation away from the administrator's own money. RSA 556:25 says writs of attachment and execution against administrators, where the cause of action existed against the deceased, run only against the goods or estate of the deceased, and the administrator is not arrested and personal assets are not attached.

That shield has a hole, and waste opens it. RSA 556:26 provides that when the sheriff returns "no goods" or "waste" on such an execution, an execution may be awarded on scire facias against the goods, estate, and person of the administrator as for the administrator's own debt, to the amount of the waste if it can be ascertained, and otherwise to the amount of the whole debt. Paying the wrong creditor first, or distributing to heirs before the debts and the order of payment are settled, is how an administrator ends up on the wrong side of that section.

When the Estate Cannot Pay Everyone

Older articles still point at RSA 557 for insolvent estates. That chapter is gone. The General Court repealed the entire chapter by 2010, 189:5, II, effective January 1, 2011, and the same session law replaced it with a shorter procedure inside chapter 554.

RSA 554:19-b, titled Insolvent Estate, is the live rule. When known claims and expenses of administration appear to exceed the value of the assets, the administrator may petition for an initial determination that the estate is insolvent. The petition lists the value of the estate, every known creditor with an address and amount, whether the decedent had a revocable trust, and the value of trust property available to satisfy claims under RSA 564-B:5-505. Notice goes to everyone beneficially interested under RSA 550:12, and the court may rule without a hearing.

An order granting that petition stays actions and suits against the deceased and the administrator, with two exceptions: matters covered by the decedent's insurance, where recovery is capped at the policy, and matters where the court lifts the stay, in which case a judgment is certified to the probate court and added to the list of claims. No sooner than six months after the grant of administration, the administrator petitions for an order to distribute assets under RSA 554:19. Interested persons get 30 days to object, the court may issue the distribution order without a hearing if nobody does, distribution follows no sooner than 30 days after the order, and the administrator files an affidavit and is discharged from creditor claims by decree.

RSA 554:19 supplies the ranking itself: costs and expenses of administration; reasonable and necessary funeral, burial, and cremation expenses; debts and taxes with preference under federal law; claims for financial or medical assistance provided by the Department of Health and Human Services along with RSA 126-A:34 and RSA 166:19 charges; just debts of the deceased; then legacies and distribution to heirs. No claim outranks another in the same class, and no lower class sees a dollar until the class above it is paid in full. The New Hampshire debt payment priority guide works through what that order means in a real estate.

Revocable Trusts Do Not End the Question

Funding a revocable trust moves assets out of probate, not out of reach. RSA 564-B:5-505 makes the property of a trust that was revocable immediately before the settlor's death subject to the settlor's creditors, the costs of administering the estate, and funeral expenses, to the extent the probate estate is inadequate to satisfy them. A spendthrift clause does not change that.

The trustee has a tool the administrator does not. RSA 564-B:5-508 lets a trustee send notice to a known claimant, or publish notice once in a newspaper of general circulation in the county where the settlor was domiciled for unknown claims, and the claim is then barred unless a proceeding to enforce it starts within one year of that mailing or publication. Two carve-outs survive: the section does not bar a claim the director of charitable trusts or the Department of Health and Human Services has authority to enforce.

Which Debts Survive the Death

Most do. Mortgages, car loans, credit cards, medical bills, unpaid income and property taxes, and judgments entered before death all become claims against the estate. A lien follows its collateral, so a mortgage on the house stays with the house whatever else happens in the estate.

Relatives usually owe nothing of their own. The debts belong to the estate, which is exactly what RSA 556:25 encodes when it limits execution to the goods or estate of the deceased. A family member is personally liable only where they co-signed the loan, held the account jointly, or agreed in their own name to pay. Collectors sometimes press the family anyway, and a solo debt in the decedent's name is still the estate's to answer.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long do creditors have to file a claim against a New Hampshire estate?

Six months. RSA 556:3 requires the demand to be exhibited to the administrator within six months after the original grant of administration, leaving out any time the administration was suspended. The clock does not run from the date of death and it does not run from the newspaper notice.

Does the New Hampshire creditor window start at the date of death?

No. Both the six-month exhibition window in RSA 556:3 and the one-year suit deadline in RSA 556:5 run from the original grant of administration. Only one New Hampshire creditor rule runs from death: RSA 556:29, which shuts creditors out of the decedent's real estate if nobody opens an estate within two years of the death.

What counts as exhibiting a demand in New Hampshire?

RSA 556:2 says a notice sent to the administrator or the administrator's agent by registered mail, setting forth the nature and amount of the claim along with a demand for payment, is a sufficient exhibition and demand. The registered-mail receipt and the date of the original grant are what fix the claim against the six-month window.

When can a creditor sue a New Hampshire estate?

Not during the first six months after the original grant. RSA 556:1 bars any action begun inside that window. RSA 556:5 then requires suit to be begun within one year of the same grant, so the practical window for filing is roughly months six through twelve.

Can a New Hampshire court extend the creditor deadline?

Yes, under RSA 556:28. A claimant petitions the court with jurisdiction over the claim, and the court may extend the time to a date certain if justice and equity require it and the claimant is not chargeable with culpable neglect. The extension cannot disturb payments or compromises the estate already made.

Are New Hampshire family members responsible for a decedent's debts?

Usually not. RSA 556:25 says writs of attachment and execution in these cases run only against the goods or estate of the deceased. A relative owes the debt only if they co-signed, held the account jointly, or agreed in their own name to pay it.

What happens when a New Hampshire estate cannot pay everyone?

The administrator may petition for a determination of insolvency under RSA 554:19-b, which stays most suits and sets up a court-ordered distribution no sooner than six months after the grant. Payment then follows the six classes in RSA 554:19, where Department of Health and Human Services assistance claims rank ahead of ordinary debts.

Related Guides

This page is general information about New Hampshire creditor claims, not legal advice about any particular estate. Whether a demand was exhibited in time, and whether a claim is payable at all, depends on facts and dates specific to one case, so the Circuit Court, Probate Division for the decedent's county or a licensed New Hampshire attorney is where those belong.

Sources:

It is not legal advice.

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Settled Estate is not a law firm and does not give legal advice.

Information current as of August 3, 2026

Settled Estate is not a law firm, and this content is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Probate laws and procedures in New Hampshire can change. Consult with a qualified attorney for advice specific to your situation. Full disclaimer.

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