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New Hampshire Intestate Succession
Pillar GuideNew Hampshire18 min read

New Hampshire Intestate Succession

Who inherits without a will in New Hampshire: the five spouse tiers of RSA 561:1, the heir ladder, and the fourth degree kinship cutoff.

By Settled Editorial

When a New Hampshire resident dies without a will, RSA 561:1 decides who inherits. A surviving spouse takes first, and the size of that share turns on two questions: whether a parent or any child of the decedent survives, and whose children those children are. Whatever the spouse does not take runs down a short ladder of relatives that ends at the fourth degree of kinship. Once you know which tier matches your survivors, estimate each heir's share and check that figure against the arithmetic below before anyone is paid.

This guide answers one question: who gets what when there is no will in New Hampshire. It follows RSA 561, the 120-hour survivorship rule in RSA 563, the murder-forfeiture rules in RSA 562-A, and the adoption rule in RSA 170-B:25. Every figure below was read at the live New Hampshire Revised Statutes Annotated on August 3, 2026. Once you know who the heirs are, read how New Hampshire probate works for the court steps that follow.

Intestacy Reaches Only the Probate Estate

Dying without a valid will is called dying intestate. No document names the heirs, so the statute names them. RSA 561:1 reaches "the real estate and personal estate of every person deceased, not devised or bequeathed," and distributes it by decree of the probate court, "subject to any homestead right." Since the 2011 court unification act, that court is the Circuit Court, Probate Division, which sits in each of the ten counties.

One vocabulary point saves confusion on every form you will meet. New Hampshire says administrator, not personal representative. RSA 553:1 makes administrator the umbrella word covering "every person to whom the administration of an estate or the execution of a will may be granted," so it covers a will-named executor too. New Hampshire never adopted the Uniform Probate Code, and the court's own paperwork follows the statute.

Property that skips these rules entirely

  • Bank or investment accounts with a payable-on-death or transfer-on-death beneficiary
  • Life insurance, an IRA, or a 401(k) with a living named beneficiary
  • Real estate or accounts held in joint tenancy with right of survivorship
  • Property titled in a revocable living trust
  • Real estate that passes under a transfer-on-death deed recorded under RSA 563-D
  • A married resident owner's family-purpose vehicle, which RSA 261:17 deems jointly held with right of survivorship unless the certificate of title says otherwise, so the decedent's interest passes to the surviving spouse

Check the title and the beneficiary form on each asset before you apply anything below. Only property the decedent owned alone, with no beneficiary and no survivorship, follows the intestate order.

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The Surviving Spouse's Share (RSA 561:1, I)

RSA 561:1, I sets five outcomes. Four of them hand the spouse a fixed dollar sum plus a fraction of what is left, and one hands over everything.

If the decedent leavesThe surviving spouse receives
No issue and no parentThe entire intestate estate
Issue, all of them also the spouse's, and the spouse has no other issueThe first $250,000, plus 1/2 of the balance
No issue, but a parent or parents surviveThe first $250,000, plus 3/4 of the balance
Issue, all of them also the spouse's, but the spouse has other issueThe first $150,000, plus 1/2 of the balance
One or more issue who are not the spouse'sThe first $100,000, plus 1/2 of the balance

"Issue" means descendants, so children, grandchildren, and further down. Read the table top to bottom and stop at the first row that matches.

The three-quarters row is the one people flatten

The parent row is the only fraction in RSA 561:1 that is not a half. A childless decedent whose mother or father survives leaves the spouse the first $250,000 plus three-quarters of the balance, and the surviving parent or parents split the remaining quarter. Cross-state summaries routinely round that to one half, which understates the spouse by a quarter of every dollar above $250,000.

The two blended-family rows turn on different families

The second and fourth rows both describe a couple whose children are all shared. They separate on whether the surviving spouse has other children. If the spouse has a child from an earlier relationship, the spouse's share drops from $250,000 to $150,000, because that child stands to inherit from the spouse later. The fifth row is the mirror image: it drops to $100,000 because the decedent left a child who is not the spouse's, and that child needs a share of this estate to inherit anything at all. Reading those two rows backwards is the most common mistake made about New Hampshire intestacy.

The dollar figures never adjust, and one of them was misprinted for 17 years

The three amounts trace to a 2003 act and carry no cost-of-living adjustment, so they are nominal 2003 dollars more than twenty years on. New Hampshire does not index them the way Maine indexes its intestate figures.

The bottom row also carries a fix worth knowing about. Until 2021 that row read "$100,000, plus 1/2 of the intestate estate" while its neighbors said "of the balance," so read literally it paid the least-favored spouse more than the others. The source line printed under RSA 561:1 now ends 2021, 206:2, Pt. VI, Sec. 3, eff. July 1, 2021., and that act inserted the words "the balance of." Any summary written before July 1, 2021 gets the bottom row wrong, in the direction that favors the spouse over the decedent's children from another relationship.

A spouse also has claims that sit outside this table, including the right to waive what a will gives and take a statutory share instead. Read what a surviving spouse can claim instead before you treat the intestate share as the final number.

Who Inherits After the Spouse (RSA 561:1, II)

Whatever the spouse does not take, or the whole estate when no spouse survives, passes down this order:

  1. Issue of the decedent. They share equally if they all stand in the same degree of kinship. If they stand in unequal degrees, the more remote ones take by representation, meaning a deceased child's branch splits that child's share.
  2. Parents. With no surviving issue, the estate goes to the decedent's parent or parents equally.
  3. Brothers and sisters, and the issue of a deceased brother or sister, taking by representation. With no surviving sibling, nieces and nephews share equally if they stand in the same degree, and by representation if they do not.
  4. Grandparents. With no issue, parent, or issue of a parent, half goes to the paternal grandparents and half to the maternal grandparents, each half going to the survivor on that side. If only one grandparent survives anywhere, that grandparent takes the whole estate.
  5. Issue of a grandparent, within the fourth degree of kinship. The paternal half goes to the paternal grandparent's descendants who are aunts, uncles, or first cousins, and the maternal half runs the same way. If no qualifying relative survives on one side, the other side takes everything.

The ladder stops earlier here than in most states

Two limits do the stopping, and both are unusual. RSA 561:1, II(f) says no portion of an intestate estate passes to anyone of the fifth or greater degree of kinship. And the ladder itself has no great-grandparent class: it ends at grandparents and their issue, where a Uniform Probate Code state such as Maine adds a further class of great-grandparents and their descendants.

Degrees are counted the civil law way, one step for each generation up to the nearest common ancestor and one for each step back down. A first cousin sits at the fourth degree and inherits. That cousin's child sits at the fifth and does not. When nobody inside the fourth degree survives, RSA 561:1, II(g) sends the estate to the State of New Hampshire.

The 120-Hour Survival Rule Sits in RSA 563, Not RSA 561

RSA 561:1, III routes every survivorship question out of the intestacy chapter: "All determinations of survivorship shall be made in accordance with the provisions of RSA 563." That chapter is New Hampshire's Uniform Simultaneous Death Act.

RSA 563:2 treats an heir who is not established by clear and convincing evidence to have outlived the decedent by 120 hours, five full days, as having died first. The reach is wider than intestacy alone: the same section covers the right to elect an interest in property and the right to exempt property, homestead, or family allowance. Two limits apply. The rule does not apply where using it would send the estate to the State. And RSA 563:6 switches it off where a will, trust, or beneficiary form deals with simultaneous death expressly.

RSA 563:4 handles the case that most often triggers all this. Where two co-owners with right of survivorship die and nobody can prove which survived the other by 120 hours, half the property passes as if one survived and half as if the other did, so each estate carries its own half.

How Children Inherit

Adopted children

Adoption inheritance is not in Title LVI at all. RSA 170-B:25 puts it in the adoption chapter, and the pivot is the final decree. On that decree the adoptee becomes the child of the adopting parents with the same rights as a birth child, and reciprocal inheritance rights with the adoptive family begin. Until the final decree issues, the adoptee still inherits from the birth parents and their relatives. Where a stepparent adopts and intends to share parenting with one of the child's parents, the child's relationship to that parent is unchanged, so the child keeps both lines.

One provision catches adult adoptions. When only one spouse petitions and the adoptee is over 18, the adoptee becomes the child of the adopting spouse and stops being the child of the other birth or legal parent, unless the child and that parent agree otherwise.

Children of unmarried parents

RSA 561:4 says a child born of unwed parents inherits from and through the mother as if born in lawful wedlock, with no further step required. Inheritance from the father runs on any one of five conditions: the parents married after the birth; the father acknowledged paternity or legitimated the child; a court adjudged him the father before his death; paternity is established after his death by clear and convincing evidence; or he adopted the child. The fourth path is the one that matters after a death, and it takes evidence rather than a filing deadline.

Half-blood relatives

New Hampshire has no half-blood section, and that absence is the answer. RSA 561 carries no reduction for relatives of the half blood and no ancestral-property rule, so a half-sibling takes under the sibling class on the same terms as a whole-blood sibling. Do not carry over another state's half-blood provision.

A child who dies under age and unmarried

RSA 561:2 is a New Hampshire rule with no Uniform Probate Code counterpart, and it reverses the ordinary result. Where a person dies under age and unmarried, property that person took by descent or devise from one parent descends to that person's brothers and sisters, to the exclusion of the other parent. A parent who would otherwise inherit from a deceased minor child can be cut out of the part of the estate that came from the other parent.

Lifetime Gifts, Disclaimers, and a Killer's Forfeiture

An advancement needs a writing

Families often argue that a lifetime gift should count against an heir's share. RSA 561:13 allows that only on paper: either the decedent declared in a contemporaneous writing that the gift was an advancement, or the heir acknowledged it in writing before the decedent died. Either writing may instead say the gift is to be taken into account in computing the division. With no writing, the gift stays a gift.

Two follow-on rules settle the arithmetic. The property is valued when the heir took possession or at the death, whichever came first. And where the gift exceeds the heir's share, the heir owes the estate nothing back unless the decedent's contemporaneous writing says so.

An heir can refuse a share

RSA 563-B is New Hampshire's Uniform Disclaimer of Property Interests Act. A disclaimer has to be in writing, declare the disclaimer, describe what is disclaimed, be signed, and be delivered to the administrator, or filed with the court that would appoint one where nobody is serving yet. A disclaimed intestate share passes as if the disclaimant had died just before the decedent, so it drops to that person's own descendants where the statute would give them a share by representation.

Two bars matter here. Accepting the interest first kills the right to disclaim it. And a disclaimer is barred to the extent it would impair the Department of Health and Human Services' ability to recover Medicaid and related assistance.

Murder forfeits everything, and the chapter was rewritten in 2025

RSA 562-A was replaced outright by an act whose source line reads 2025, 237:1, eff. July 15, 2025. on every section, so any summary of New Hampshire's slayer rule written before that date is stale.

RSA 562-A:2 is the operative sentence: an individual who murders the decedent forfeits all benefits with respect to the decedent's estate, and an intestate estate passes as if the killer had died first. RSA 562-A:3 also severs a joint tenancy with right of survivorship held by the two of them, turning it into equal tenancies in common, which stops the killer from taking the house by survivorship.

RSA 562-A:5 supplies three routes to killer status. A criminal conviction settles it once all appeals are exhausted. So does a final civil judgment. Where neither exists, the administrator or anyone who would have inherited had the killer died first may bring a civil action and prove the murder by a preponderance of the evidence, with notice to the New Hampshire Department of Justice, which may step in to ask the court to pause the case while a criminal investigation runs.

When No Heir Turns Up

Escheat is rare, and New Hampshire builds two waiting periods in before it happens.

RSA 561:9 applies where no heir or legatee has been ascertained three years after the original grant of administration. The judge then orders the administrator to pay the balance into the state treasury, where it stays subject to the claims of anyone entitled, on application to the legislature.

RSA 561:10 handles a known heir nobody can find. Where more than $5,000 belongs to a person whose residence is unknown, or who refuses to accept it, the administrator petitions the court and, once the court is satisfied that due diligence was used, the money goes to the state treasurer under RSA 471-C, the unclaimed property law. For $5,000 or less the court can distribute the money as though that person had no interest, on an affidavit describing the effort made.

One more distribution rule catches families with young heirs. Under RSA 561:20, a minor's share that is not under legal guardianship goes to a custodian for the minor under RSA 463-A, the Uniform Transfers to Minors Act, rather than to the minor directly.

How to Map a New Hampshire Intestate Estate

Work the sequence in this order:

  1. Separate probate property from anything passing by beneficiary designation, survivorship, a trust, or a recorded transfer-on-death deed. Only probate property follows RSA 561.
  2. Confirm who survived the decedent by at least 120 hours under RSA 563:2 before you count anyone as an heir.
  3. Pick the matching row of RSA 561:1, I for the spouse, checking both whose children survive and whether the spouse has children from elsewhere.
  4. Subtract funeral costs, administration charges, and creditor claims before you divide, because heirs take what remains after the estate's debts.
  5. Send the rest down the RSA 561:1, II ladder, dropping any branch that runs past the fourth degree of kinship.
  6. Check whether an heir signed a disclaimer, took a documented advancement, or falls under RSA 562-A.

If the whole estate turns out to pass to one heir, New Hampshire may let that heir skip the inventory, the bond, and the accounting. New Hampshire has no small-estate affidavit and no dollar cap, so read waiver of administration for a sole heir rather than searching for a threshold that does not exist.

A valid will replaces every rule above with the decedent's own plan and lets the decedent name the executor who settles the estate. What New Hampshire requires for a valid will covers the signing formalities that make one hold up.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who inherits if there is no will in New Hampshire?

The surviving spouse inherits first under RSA 561:1, I, taking the whole estate when no child and no parent of the decedent survives, and otherwise a set dollar amount plus a fraction of the balance. What remains passes to the decedent's children, then parents, then siblings and their children, then grandparents and their descendants within the fourth degree of kinship.

Does a spouse always inherit everything in New Hampshire?

No. The spouse takes the entire intestate estate only when the decedent left no issue and no surviving parent. In every other case the spouse takes a fixed sum of $250,000, $150,000, or $100,000 plus a fraction of the balance, and the rest passes to the decedent's children or parents.

Do stepchildren inherit under New Hampshire intestacy?

A stepchild the decedent never adopted is not issue of the decedent and takes nothing under RSA 561:1. New Hampshire's ladder ends at grandparents and their descendants, so unlike some states it has no last-resort class that reaches a deceased spouse's children.

Do cousins inherit in New Hampshire?

First cousins can. They are issue of a grandparent and sit at the fourth degree of kinship, which is the outer edge of RSA 561:1, II(e). A first cousin once removed sits at the fifth degree, and RSA 561:1, II(f) bars any distribution at that distance. Where nobody within the fourth degree survives, the estate goes to the State.

Does New Hampshire have an estate or inheritance tax?

New Hampshire collects neither one, and the two chapters got there by different routes. RSA 86, the legacy and succession tax, is printed as repealed in its entirety effective January 1, 2003. RSA 87, the estate tax, is still printed in full and sits dormant instead: it was pegged to the federal credit for state death taxes, and RSA 87:9 voids the chapter once that credit is repealed. The federal credit gave way to a deduction for deaths after December 31, 2004, so no New Hampshire estate tax has been due on a death since. Federal estate tax can still reach a large estate.

What if two people die within days of each other?

RSA 563:2 asks whether the heir outlived the decedent by 120 hours, proved by clear and convincing evidence. An heir who fails that test is treated as having died first, and the share moves to the next taker. Where two joint owners die and nobody can prove the order, RSA 563:4 splits the property so half passes through each estate.

This guide is general information about New Hampshire estates, not advice for your situation.

Sources:

It is not 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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