Find Someone in New Hampshire
New Hampshire locks the door most people knock on first: its vital-records statute closes birth, marriage, and death records to anyone without a “direct and tangible interest” – and names commercial list-pulling as exactly what does not qualify. What the Granite State leaves open is just as specific: deeds indexed by name in ten county registries, a unified court system with a new public portal, and records that turn public on dates the law prints. This guide maps both, in the order a lawful locate works them.
New Hampshire in Four Rules
One: vital records are closed by default – RSA 5-C:9 demands a direct and tangible interest, and commercial list requests are expressly excluded. Two: property is open – every recorded deed is indexed by grantor and grantee name at the county registry. Three: the courts run one statewide system, and its new LUCIE portal shows case information for the case types it covers. Four: time opens the rest – births before 1901 and death, marriage, divorce, legal-separation, and civil-annulment records before 1948 are public, and a rolling 100/50-year line releases more each April. A lawful New Hampshire locate therefore starts at the registries and the dockets, not at the town clerk’s counter.
Two and a Half Minutes on New Hampshire’s Records
The locked front door, the open registries, and the lawful route between them.
Watch Overview
Ten Counties, Two Layers: Where the Paper Trail Splits
The statute names the counties; older custom keeps the vital records at the town hall.
Start with the map the law draws. RSA 22:1 divides New Hampshire into exactly ten counties – Rockingham, Strafford, Belknap, Carroll, Merrimack, Hillsborough, Cheshire, Sullivan, Grafton, and Coos – and each county provides an office for a register of deeds, who under RSA 478:1 must keep all the books, records, files, and papers belonging to that registry. Land is county business here, the conventional American arrangement.
Vital records are not. Births, deaths, marriages, and divorces live with the town or city clerk, alongside the state’s Division of Vital Records Administration. The statutes treat the clerks as working custodians down to fine detail – RSA 5-C:106 spells out when a clerk may decline to produce an old ledger book, obliges the clerk to redact the record to fill a condition-based denial, and obliges the clerk to refer every denied request to the division’s genealogical research facilities. A person’s trail here crosses two governments before it reaches a courtroom: the town that recorded the marriage, the county that recorded the deed.
Above both sits the Right-to-Know Law: RSA 91-A:4 gives every citizen the right to inspect governmental records “except as otherwise prohibited by statute or RSA 91-A:5.” Open is the default; the rest of this page is about the exceptions that matter when the record you want names a person.
The Locked Front Door: RSA 5-C and the Commercial-Lookup Ban
The vital-records statute does not just restrict access – it names who is excluded.
Under RSA 5-C:9, the registrar or local custodian may not permit inspection of a vital record, disclose what it contains, or issue a copy unless the applicant shows a direct and tangible interest in that record. Then the statute says who is out: “Commercial firms or agencies requesting a listing of names and addresses shall not be considered to have a direct and tangible interest.” That sentence is why no data broker can lawfully bulk-pull New Hampshire vital records.
Who is in? RSA 5-C:102 lists the registrant, immediate family, the legal guardian or legal representative, people who can document a need to establish or protect a personal or property right, the news media on matters of a public nature, genealogists authorized by the family, and a former spouse – though the former spouse’s route reaches that divorce, separation, or annulment record itself, not vital records generally. The same section expressly denies the interest to natural parents of a child adopted outside the immediate family. The personal-or-property-right category is the lawful professional door: an heir search or probate matter can qualify, documented in writing with identification.
Even a qualifying request costs something: the statutory fee schedule sets $15 for a record search including the first copy or verification, $10 for each subsequent copy, and $25 for a delayed birth certificate – and under RSA 5-C:100 the search fee is payable whether or not the record is found. If what you actually need is a current address rather than a certificate, the front door was never the right door – you can start a locate and we will work the open layers this page describes instead.
1901, 1948, and a Rolling Line: The Dates That Open Records
New Hampshire prints its openness in years, and moves the line every April.
Two provisions decide when a closed vital record becomes an open one, and they run on different clocks. The fixed line, RSA 5-C:102, makes birth records prior to 1901 and death, marriage, divorce, legal separation, and civil annulment records prior to 1948 public records. The rolling line, RSA 5-C:105, makes birth records more than 100 years old and death, marriage, and divorce records more than 50 years old part of the public domain – and requires the division to release each year’s newly public records by April 1 of the following year.
For a search run in 2026, the rolling line governs the categories it names – it is strictly broader than the fixed line and refreshes annually – while the fixed 1948 line remains the only public line for legal-separation and civil-annulment records, which the rolling provision does not list. The public-domain frontier for births trails the present by a century, deaths, marriages, and divorces by half a century, and both advance each spring.
Behind the newest batch sits a deep archive: the Division of Vital Records Administration maintains a genealogical research vault, open to the public, holding records back to 1640 – older than the counties themselves. For an heir search or a maiden-name question on earlier generations, New Hampshire is superbly documented. It is the living person the statutes wall off.
What Opens, What Stays Shut: The Access Rules in One Table
Each row is a different door, and a different statute deciding who gets through it.
| Record | Where It Lives | The Access Rule | Authority |
|---|---|---|---|
| Birth Records | Town or city clerk, plus the state division | Direct and tangible interest required; public once more than 100 years old (pre-1901 under the fixed line), released each April | RSA 5-C:9, 5-C:102, 5-C:105 |
| Death, Marriage, Divorce Records | Town or city clerk, plus the state division | Same gate; public before 1948, or once more than 50 years old; statutory search fee $15, subsequent copies $10 each | RSA 5-C:102, 5-C:105, 5-C:10 |
| Deeds, Mortgages, Liens | County registry of deeds, one per county | Open; every instrument entered in a grantor index and a grantee index, searchable by name | RSA 478:1, 478:5 |
| Court Case Information | Unified Judicial Branch, statewide | LUCIE portal shows status, hearings, parties, and charges for covered case types; case documents at courthouse kiosks | courts.nh.gov |
| Voter Checklist | Town or city clerks; statewide database with the secretary of state | Open to examine before a meeting or election; paper copy $25 per town or ward by statute; commercial use a crime; statewide list restricted | RSA 654:31, 654:31-a |
| A Current Address | No single office holds it | Assembled across the open layers and licensed databases under a documented permissible purpose Our lane | GLBA / DPPA |
Read down the third column and the strategy writes itself: the records that identify a person are gated by interest and by date; the records that place a person are open by design.
Deeds Are the Open Door: Ten Registries, Two Name Indexes
The statute requires every deed to be findable by name, in both directions.
Property is where New Hampshire’s paper trail opens up, and the openness is structural. RSA 478:5 directs that when a register of deeds accepts an instrument for recording, the grantors’ names go into a grantor index and the grantees’ names into a grantee index. Two indexes, both keyed to people: you can run a person forward, to what they bought, and backward, to what they sold, in the registry of deeds for the county where the land sits.
For a locate, that double index does real work – a recent grantee entry ties a name to a parcel, a mortgage on the same instrument means a lender verified the borrower there, a grantor entry can date a departure. With ten registries, a subject with property history sweeps quickly; the hard case is too little paper, not too many offices. A renter appears in neither index, and a person holding property through a trust or an LLC appears one step removed, under a name you must establish first. Those are the searches where the registry layer gets crossed with dockets, business filings, and licensed data rather than read alone.
LUCIE: The Court Portal That Replaced the Old System in 2026
One unified judiciary, one new public window into it.
New Hampshire’s trial courts are a single statewide system – a Circuit Court and a Superior Court under one Judicial Branch – so court records have one front end, not ten. As of September 2026 that front end is new: the Judicial Branch has launched LUCIE, short for Look Up Case Information Electronically, replacing its previous public case access portal, which the courts say survives just “several weeks” after launch. A guide pointing you at the old portal is pointing at a system on its way out.
LUCIE’s initial coverage is specific: non-confidential, electronically filed Circuit Court civil, small claims, name change, and estate cases, plus Superior Court civil and criminal cases. The public can create an account and see case status, scheduled hearings, the parties involved, and charges and dispositions by case type. What it does not hand you is the paper: non-confidential case documents stay on public-access kiosks in the courthouses. For locate work the split is workable – docket information is what places a person in a town and a time, and an estate case can name heirs before a single document is pulled.
The Court Will Run the Names for You: Record Checks in Batches of Five
A little-known Judicial Branch service – with limits worth reading twice.
New Hampshire’s Judicial Branch operates a service worth knowing about: for a processing fee, its Central Processing Center runs an electronic records check across the trial courts when you submit five or more name requests, filed on a court form (NHJB-2798-DFS for Superior and Circuit Court checks). The courts publish no fee figure, so neither will we. What comes back are case summaries – by the Branch’s own description not the official court record, informational only, and never covering confidential cases – and searches reaching before 1992 can take additional time.
The same courts draw a boundary we share: the Judicial Branch warns that its public case access portal should not be used for background checks or other purposes needing more complete identity or case information. That matches our line – locate research is not a consumer report, and neither LUCIE nor a CPC summary is a screening tool. The batch service fits volume work with names in hand; the single-name question with a thin identifier is docket-plus-everything-else research, not a form submission.
The Voter Checklist Trap: Public at the Counter, Salted Against Resale
The most misunderstood “public record” in New Hampshire.
Yes, New Hampshire’s voter checklist is a public record – and no, it is not a skip-tracing tool. Under RSA 654:31, a town or city’s public checklist is open for examination before the opening of a meeting or election at which it will be used, and the clerk or supervisors will furnish a copy on request: $25 for a paper copy per town or ward under the statute, with one free electronic request per election. Per RSA 654:31-a, five fields are public – name, domicile address, mailing address, town or city, and party affiliation; the rest of the registration form, phone and email included, is confidential as a rule.
Then come the teeth. The statute makes commercial use of checklist or voter information a crime – a misdemeanor for a natural person, a felony otherwise – and arms the enforcement: “The secretary of state may insert inauthentic entries into copies of the public checklist provided under this section for purposes of facilitating enforcement of this paragraph.” A honeypot, written into election law: whoever resells New Hampshire voter data may be reselling names planted to catch them. The statewide list is walled off separately – provided to political parties, political committees, and candidates, with no general-public route in the section; the most the general public gets is a view-only terminal at the state records and archives center, printing and duplicating forbidden.
Two wrinkles matter for finding a person: the law also defines a nonpublic checklist for voters entitled by law to keep their status nonpublic, so a protected person may simply not appear – and because of all of the above, we treat voter data as off-limits for commercial locate work entirely.
When the Public Doors Dead-End
Six walls a do-it-yourself New Hampshire search runs into, each built by a specific rule.
Recent Vital Records
RSA 5-C:9 bars inspection and copies without a direct and tangible interest, and commercial list requests are excluded by name.
Driver and Vehicle Records
The federal DPPA limits motor-vehicle record data to permitted purposes. The DMV counter is not a lookup window.
The Statewide Voter List
Provided to parties, committees, and candidates under RSA 654:31; the section gives the general public no route to the full list.
The Nonpublic Checklist
Voters entitled by law to keep their status nonpublic are absent from the copies anyone can examine or buy.
Protected Addresses
Address Confidentiality Program participants use an attorney-general-designated address under RSA 7:43. We decline these locates.
Confidential Cases and the Paper
The record-check service returns no summaries for confidential cases, and even LUCIE-visible case documents stay on courthouse kiosks.
Worked Backwards: How a New Hampshire Locate Actually Runs
Deeds first, dockets second, filings third – vital records almost never.
In most states a records search starts with who a person is and works toward where they are. New Hampshire’s access rules invert that. The identity layer is gated, so a professional locate here starts where the state is open: the grantor and grantee indexes for the counties in play, then the dockets – LUCIE case information, an estate that names heirs, a small-claims judgment with an address in the caption – then the business layer, where the Secretary of State runs corporation and UCC search routes through its QuickStart system, tying a person to an entity and an entity to a registered address. Licensed databases, used under a documented permissible purpose, cross-check what the public layers suggest.
That ordering is also why thin-footprint cases – the renter with a common name, the subject two towns over the Massachusetts line – are research problems rather than search-box problems, the daily work of our skip tracing services. The same layers carry specialized matters: address research for serving court papers rides the dockets, and judgment-support work built on finding hidden assets leans on the registry and UCC layers. When a trail crosses a border, we work the same New England puzzle next door, with guides for finding someone in Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. We report what the records support, ranked and sourced – what we search is fixed by these statutes; what any search yields is not something anyone can honestly guarantee in advance.
Where We Draw the Line
What a lawful public-records research firm will and will not do.
Finding someone is not the same as exposing someone, and we are not a consumer reporting agency: a New Hampshire locate is not a consumer report, and it is the wrong instrument for an employment, tenancy, credit, or insurance decision. We are a public-records research firm operating under GLBA and DPPA. We are not a law firm, and we do not provide legal advice. Every search runs on a stated, permissible purpose, and we confirm that purpose before we begin.
We honor New Hampshire’s Address Confidentiality Program, established by RSA 7:43 through 7:45 for victims of domestic violence, stalking, and sexual assault. A certified participant uses an address designated by the attorney general, who serves as their agent for mail and for service of process; state and local agencies enter that substitute address when creating new public records; certification runs four years at a time. If a person we are asked to find is shielded by that program, or a request carries the markers of stalking, harassment, or an attempt to reach someone who has lawfully sought to stay hidden, we decline. There is no permissible purpose that makes locating a protected survivor acceptable, and no fee that changes that answer. This page is general information about New Hampshire public records, not legal advice.
Our Commitment
We work a New Hampshire locate across the layers this page maps – registry indexes, dockets, filings, and licensed databases – under a documented permissible purpose, and we report what the records support, typically within 24 hours. For the full commercial service behind this guide, see our New Hampshire skip tracing services.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are New Hampshire birth, marriage, and death records public?
Mostly no. RSA 5-C:9 requires a direct and tangible interest before a registrar may let you inspect or copy a vital record. Age is the exception: births before 1901 and deaths, marriages, and divorces before 1948 are public, and a rolling line opens birth records more than 100 years old and death, marriage, and divorce records more than 50 years old, released each year by April 1.
Who has a direct and tangible interest in a New Hampshire vital record?
RSA 5-C:102 lists the registrant, immediate family, the legal guardian or legal representative, people documenting a need to establish or protect a personal or property right, the news media on matters of a public nature, genealogists authorized by the family, and a former spouse seeking copies of that divorce, separation, or annulment record. Commercial firms requesting listings of names and addresses are expressly excluded by RSA 5-C:9.
How do I search New Hampshire property records by name?
Through the registry of deeds for the county where the land sits. New Hampshire has ten counties, each with its own registry, and RSA 478:5 requires every recorded instrument to be entered in a grantor index and a grantee index, so ownership can be searched by name in both directions. If you do not know the county, you may need to check more than one registry.
What is LUCIE, and which New Hampshire court cases can I see online?
LUCIE, short for Look Up Case Information Electronically, is the Judicial Branch’s public case-information portal, launched in 2026 to replace the prior system. It initially covers electronically filed Circuit Court civil, small claims, name change, and estate cases plus Superior Court civil and criminal cases, showing case status, hearings, parties, and charges. Case documents remain viewable at courthouse public-access kiosks.
Can the New Hampshire courts run a records check for me?
For batches, yes. The Judicial Branch’s Central Processing Center performs an electronic records check for a processing fee when you submit five or more name requests, returning case summaries from the trial courts. The summaries are not the official court record, and confidential cases are never included. For a single name, you search LUCIE yourself or work the records through the other layers.
Can I use the New Hampshire voter checklist to find someone’s address?
Not for anything commercial. The public checklist can be examined at the town or city before a meeting or election and copies purchased, but RSA 654:31 makes commercial use of voter information a crime and lets the secretary of state insert inauthentic entries into copies to catch violators. Only name, domicile, mailing address, town, and party are public, and voters entitled to nonpublic status do not appear.
Can you get someone’s address from the NH DMV or a driver’s license record?
No. Driver and vehicle records are restricted by the federal Driver’s Privacy Protection Act, which limits personal information from motor-vehicle records to specific permitted purposes. We use that category of data only where a documented permissible purpose applies, and curiosity is not one of them.
Will you find someone protected by New Hampshire’s Address Confidentiality Program?
No. Under RSA 7:43 a certified participant uses an address designated by the attorney general, who also receives their mail and service of process; under RSA 7:45 agencies enter that substitute address into new public records. If the person you are asking about is protected, or the request carries the markers of stalking or harassment, we decline the case.
Need to Find Someone in New Hampshire?
We work New Hampshire’s open layers – registry indexes, dockets, and filings, cross-checked against licensed databases – lawfully and for a documented permissible purpose, typically within 24 hours. Contact us with what you have, or start below.
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