New Hampshire Debt Collection Statute of Limitations
For New Hampshire creditors and the collection counsel working their files: the three-year clock section by section, and the dated residency research that decides whether it has actually run. RSA 508:4, I gives all personal actions three years and draws no line between a written contract, an open account and a store card. What takes time out of the count is RSA 508:9, which excludes a defendant’s absence from and residence out of the state – a dated records question, and the part of this we work. General information, not legal advice.
The Short Answer, With Section Numbers
Three years, under RSA 508:4, I, for every personal action except slander and libel – and on the face of the paragraph nothing takes a suit on an unpaid balance outside that phrase. Two qualifiers live in that same sentence: its opening words, “Except as otherwise provided by law”, and a discovery rule that is the back half of the sentence. RSA 508:1 stands the chapter down wherever a different time is limited by statute – six years on a note under RSA 382-A:3-118(a), four on a contract for sale. Nothing in chapter 508 restarts a period; RSA 508:9 can take months out of the count. Not legal advice.
Watch: Three Years, One Sentence
Watch Overview
RSA 508:4, I: One Sentence, Three Years, No Split
New Hampshire’s limitations rule for debt is one sentence. RSA 508:4, I: “Except as otherwise provided by law, all personal actions, except actions for slander or libel, may be brought only within 3 years of the act or omission complained of, except that when the injury and its causal relationship to the act or omission were not discovered and could not reasonably have been discovered at the time of the act or omission, the action shall be commenced within 3 years of the time the plaintiff discovers, or in the exercise of reasonable diligence should have discovered, the injury and its causal relationship to the act or omission complained of.” The source note beneath it ends 1986, 227:12, eff. July 1, 1986.
Two words carry the commercial weight: all personal actions. The paragraph does not distinguish a revolving balance from a physician’s bill, and separates no debt founded on a written instrument from a debt on an open or unwritten account. No adjacent limb draws that line either – confirm it in the text of RSA 508:4 at the New Hampshire General Court. RSA 508:4, II is the section’s only other paragraph, and it puts slander and libel on the same three years.
Both qualifiers travel with the sentence: the opening words concede the section’s own displacement before stating its rule, and the discovery clause is the back half of that same sentence rather than a separate rule. What the paragraph never settles is when the period began on a given account: accrual on a defaulted balance is for a New Hampshire attorney reading the history. Our debt collection statute of limitations by state index covers each jurisdiction’s own sections.
RSA 508:1 Is the Door – and the UCC Walks Through It
The rule for when something more specific wins is the chapter’s first section. RSA 508:1, Limitation of Chapter: “The provisions of this chapter shall not apply to cases in which a different time is limited by statute.”
Two of the statutes that walk through it are New Hampshire’s Uniform Commercial Code sections. RSA 382-A:3-118(a): “Except as provided in subsection (e), an action to enforce the obligation of a party to pay a note payable at a definite time must be commenced within six years after the due date or dates stated in the note or, if a due date is accelerated, within six years after the accelerated due date.” Six years – but name the instrument before using the number, because RSA 382-A:3-118 sets seven periods rather than one.
RSA 382-A:2-725(1) handles goods, giving an action for breach of a contract for sale four years from accrual and letting the original agreement – and only the original agreement – cut that to as little as one year while never lengthening it. On knowledge the two chapters part company: 508:4, I writes discovery into the three years, while 2-725(2) starts from the opposite default – the claim accrues at the breach whether or not the aggrieved party knew of it – then writes discovery back in for one case, where a warranty explicitly extends to the goods’ future performance.
Chapter 508 Counted: Thirty-Six Headings, and Every Period It Sets
Chapter 508 is numbered 508:1 through 508:22, and a count that reads only the numbers returns twenty-two. That is short by fourteen. Lettered sections have been inserted into the run – 508:4-a through 508:4-h, 508:12-a through 508:12-d, 508:17-a and 508:18-a – so the chapter carries thirty-six section headings, not twenty-two. Count them in the merged text of RSA chapter 508; the General Court’s own table of contents lists the same thirty-six.
Apply one test to the captions – does the caption carry the words Liability, Limited, Limitation on Liability or Recovery Limited? – and fourteen of the thirty-six say yes: 508:12-a, 12-b, 12-c, 12-d, 14, 16, 17, 17-a, 18, 18-a, 19, 20, 21 and 22. “Landowner Liability Limited.” “Liability; Equine Activities.” “Liability Limited for Winter Maintenance.” Nor is thirty-six headings thirty-six live rules: RSA 508:4-a is a shell reading “Repealed by 1965, 241:3, eff. Aug. 31, 1965.”
One check on anyone quoting the chapter from memory: the word “toll” occurs in it exactly once, and it has nothing to do with tolling a period. RSA 508:4-h, II reads “For toll violations, the limitation period under paragraph I shall not begin until one year after the effective date of the denial of motor vehicle registration renewal privileges.” A highway toll.
| Section | What it governs | The period |
|---|---|---|
| RSA 508:2, I | Real actions | 20 years |
| RSA 508:3 | Disability, recovery of real estate | 5 years after the disability is removed |
| RSA 508:4, I | All personal actions except slander and libel | 3 years, discovery limb in the same sentence |
| RSA 508:4, II | Slander or libel | 3 years from accrual |
| RSA 508:4-b, III | Improvement to real property warranted in writing beyond 8 years | Extends to equal the warranty period |
| RSA 508:4-g | Offences under RSA 632-A or RSA 639:2 | May be commenced at any time |
| RSA 508:4-h, I | State as plaintiff | 3 years from the agency’s actual knowledge – unless the state shows the delay was not unreasonable or prejudicial to the defendant, or that the public detriment from the delay outweighs the detriment to the defendant; and no limitation at all for a wrong that is ongoing or has not been corrected |
| RSA 508:5 | Debt on judgments, recognizances, sealed contracts | 20 years from accrual |
| RSA 508:6 | Notes secured by a real-estate mortgage | As long as an action on the mortgage may be brought |
| RSA 508:7 | Writs of error | 3 years after judgment, unless the court allows longer for sufficient cause, upon petition and notice |
| RSA 508:8 | Infant or mentally incompetent person | 2 years after the disability is removed |
| RSA 508:10 | New action after judgment against the plaintiff | 1 year after that judgment, where the right of action is not barred by the judgment |
| RSA 382-A:3-118(a) | Note payable at a definite time | 6 years after the stated or accelerated due date |
| RSA 382-A:3-118(b) | Demand note, after demand or with none made | 6 years after the demand; where no demand is made, barred once neither principal nor interest has been paid for 10 continuous years |
| RSA 382-A:3-118(g) | Conversion, money had and received, Article 3 warranty | 3 years after accrual |
| RSA 382-A:2-725(1) | Breach of a contract for sale | 4 years; reducible by the original agreement to 1 year |
| RSA 382-A:2-725(3) | Timely action terminated, another still available | 6 months – but not where the termination was a voluntary discontinuance or a dismissal for want of prosecution |
| RSA 511:55 | Attachment lien, with a judgment or without | 6 years from the judgment; otherwise up to 10 years from filing |
RSA 508:4-b, III is where the chapter expressly lengthens a period: where an improvement to real property is expressly warranted in writing for longer than 8 years, the limitation period extends to equal that warranty. So the chapter contains no restart, but it does contain an extension, and those are not the same thing.
What New Hampshire Wrote About a Promise, and a Payment
New Hampshire’s limitations chapter does not contain a restart. None of the thirty-six section headings is an acknowledgment, new-promise or part-payment section, and the vocabulary is absent from the chapter’s full text: “new promise”, “part payment”, “partial payment”, “revive”, “revival”, “written promise” and “promise in writing” all return nothing. So does the bare word “promise” – it appears nowhere in RSA chapter 508. “Acknowledgment” does appear, twice, and both times it is a state department’s written designation of an emergency agent under RSA 508:17-a, III, not a debt.
Two New Hampshire statutes do speak to a debtor’s promise or payment, and neither revives a stale claim. RSA 506:2-a, in chapter 506, Prevention of Frauds and Perjuries: “No action shall be maintained against any person who may have been discharged as a bankrupt under the laws of the United States, or under the laws of this state pertaining to insolvency proceedings or assignments for the benefit of creditors, upon any promise to pay any debt or demand from which he was or shall be released by such discharge, unless such promise is made after such discharge, and is in writing and signed by the party to be charged therewith.” That is a writing-and-signature requirement, not a limitations rule. And RSA 382-A:3-118(b), where no demand for payment has been made to the maker, bars enforcement of a demand note once neither principal nor interest has been paid for ten continuous years – a sentence in which a payment does real work, though it bars rather than revives.
So what a payment does to a New Hampshire period is a question for counsel on the file, not a rule you can read off the code. The provisions consulted for that sentence were RSA chapters 506 and 508, RSA 382-A:3-118 and 382-A:2-725, RSA chapter 358-C, RSA 359-B:3 and RSA 511:55. If you are triaging paper on a payment date – the situation our guide to old and zombie debt collection is about – confirm that payment’s effect under New Hampshire law first. Our Vermont limitations page and our Iowa debt collection limitations page each work from their own state’s sections.
RSA 508:9: The Absence Ledger
RSA 508:9, Defendant’s Absence: “If the defendant in a personal action was absent from and residing out of the state at the time the cause of action accrued, or afterward, the time of such absence shall be excluded in computing the time limited for bringing the action.” Against a three-year period the arithmetic changes shape: a claim that looks four years stale on the servicing record may sit inside the window if the debtor spent fourteen months of it living elsewhere. Two things in the wording are load-bearing. The conjunction is and – absent from and residing out of the state, both halves, not either. And the section excludes that time; it restarts nothing. That sentence is the whole section; read it at the text of RSA 508:9 at the New Hampshire General Court.
The question is factual: was this person absent from and residing out of New Hampshire, and between which dates? Whether the history satisfies the section is your attorney’s call, but the section’s own wording sets what the file has to carry. Each stretch has to answer both halves – not merely that the debtor was somewhere else, but that he was residing there – so a forwarding order or an out-of-state billing address answers neither half on its own. And because what is excluded is “the time of such absence”, every stretch needs a start date and an end date: property and registration filings, business registrations, court indices, and dated address entries from the licensed data sources we are permitted to use, each one sourced so counsel can put the dates in front of a New Hampshire court. It is the same evidence base as locating a judgment debtor, built to a different question. If that is the gap on your file, send us the account and the lawful reason behind it; a first read typically comes back within 24 hours. It sits alongside the rest of our skip tracing services.
Boundaries, plainly. We take work only after a requester states a lawful reason the law recognises – a permissible purpose – and we can see the connection between that reason and the search. New Hampshire writes its own definition of a consumer reporting agency at RSA 359-B:3, VI, and it is a two-part test: a person who, for monetary fees, dues or on a cooperative nonprofit basis, regularly engages in whole or in part in assembling or evaluating consumer credit information or other information on consumers for the purpose of furnishing consumer reports to third parties, and who uses a means or facility of interstate commerce to prepare or furnish those reports. That is not what this firm is or sells. Nothing we deliver is a consumer report, and none of it may be used to decide anyone’s eligibility for credit, insurance, a tenancy or a job; that decision belongs with a consumer reporting agency. We decline locate requests where the record suggests the person moved because of domestic violence, is protected by a restraining or protective order, or is enrolled in an address confidentiality program. And none of this is legal advice: whether RSA 508:9 saves your claim is for New Hampshire counsel.
One Judgment, Two Statutes: 508:5’s Twenty Years, 511:55’s Six
RSA 508:5, Specialties, allows twenty years from accrual to bring an action of debt on three things: a judgment, a recognizance, and a contract under seal. Read the operative verb before using the number: the section fixes how long a party has to bring an action of debt upon a judgment – a second filing deadline, not a statement of how long a New Hampshire judgment may be enforced.
Enforcement sits in a different chapter. RSA 511:55 is in RSA chapter 511, Attachments, under the subdivision heading Limitation of Attachment Lien. Paragraph I: “Real or personal property attached shall be held until the expiration of 6 years from the time of rendering a judgment in the action in favor of the plaintiff on which he can take execution, and, if there are several attachments, the property shall be held for the creditors in the order in which their attachments were made.” Where no judgment is involved, an attachment expires by operation of law ten years from filing under paragraph II or IV – “unless otherwise dissolved”, the statute’s own qualifier, which matters because chapter 511 carries subdivisions on dissolution and release that were not read for this page. Twenty years to sue on the judgment, six for an attachment lien behind one, up to ten for an attachment without one. “A New Hampshire judgment dies in six years” is not what any of these sections says.
What may be done with a judgment once it is held – the writs, the periodic-payment machinery, the levy – belongs to our page on New Hampshire judgment collection. Our part on either side of that line is support rather than collection, and both of these New Hampshire sections are date arithmetic first: when the judgment was rendered, since 511:55, I runs its six years from that moment; and when an attachment was filed in the register of deeds for the county where the real estate sits, since paragraph II runs its ten years from the filing. An asset search for judgment collection produces those dates and the recorded assets behind them. What it never includes is the contents of a private financial account.
RSA 358-C: The Collection-Conduct Chapter New Hampshire Wrote for Itself
RSA chapter 358-C, Unfair, Deceptive or Unreasonable Collection Practices, dates from 1975 and runs to five sections: definitions, a general prohibition, prohibited acts, remedies, and check collection charges. None of the five sets a limitations period, so RSA 508:4’s three years and the conduct rules here are separate questions on one file. The prohibition is a single sentence, RSA 358-C:2: “No debt collector shall collect or attempt to collect a debt in an unfair, deceptive or unreasonable manner as defined in this chapter.” The closing words are operative – RSA 358-C:3 is that definition rather than a list of examples, and its chapeau says conduct “shall be deemed” unfair, deceptive or unreasonable in twelve enumerated situations. The chapter is scoped to consumer transactions throughout, so a purely commercial debt sits outside it.
One of the twelve is squarely about locating a debtor. RSA 358-C:3, IV prohibits communicating or threatening to communicate the fact of a debt, except by proper judicial process, to anyone other than the person who might reasonably be expected to be liable for it – and then carves out four exceptions. The narrowest, IV(c), permits communicating with the debtor’s spouse, or with a minor debtor’s parents or guardians, where the purpose is solely to locate the debtor, only after thirty days of being unable to locate by other means, and only once. Read whole, New Hampshire forbids third-party disclosure and licenses four narrow departures. Two things this page will not do: say that suing on a time-barred New Hampshire debt violates RSA 358-C:3, III or VII, which would need New Hampshire authority nobody read here; or classify this firm, or you, as a “debt collector” under RSA 358-C:1, VIII in either direction.
What This File Contains, and What It Does Not
You get a dated address history you can put in front of a New Hampshire court, every entry sourced and every gap named as a gap. You will not get an opinion on whether RSA 508:9 excludes those dates, whether the claim is timely, or what a payment in year four did to the period. Those are for New Hampshire counsel.
New Hampshire Limitations Questions
How long is the statute of limitations on debt in New Hampshire?
Three years. RSA 508:4, I provides that all personal actions, except actions for slander or libel, may be brought only within 3 years of the act or omission complained of, subject to a discovery rule where the injury could not reasonably have been discovered at the time. On the face of the section, nothing takes a suit to collect an unpaid balance outside that phrase. The paragraph opens with Except as otherwise provided by law, so another statute can displace it. Not legal advice.
Is credit card debt subject to the same three years in New Hampshire?
On the face of the section, yes. RSA 508:4 does not separate a debt founded on a written instrument from a debt on an open or unwritten account, and carries no limb for a revolving balance or a store card. It has two paragraphs, I and II, and II is about slander and libel. When the period began to run on a particular account is a separate question for a New Hampshire attorney reading the history.
What does RSA 508:4, I actually say?
In full: Except as otherwise provided by law, all personal actions, except actions for slander or libel, may be brought only within 3 years of the act or omission complained of, except that when the injury and its causal relationship to the act or omission were not discovered and could not reasonably have been discovered at the time of the act or omission, the action shall be commenced within 3 years of the time the plaintiff discovers, or in the exercise of reasonable diligence should have discovered, the injury and its causal relationship to the act or omission complained of. Source note: 1986, 227:12, eff. July 1, 1986.
Does a partial payment or a written acknowledgment restart the clock in New Hampshire?
New Hampshire’s limitations chapter contains no restart. None of the thirty-six section headings in RSA chapter 508 is an acknowledgment, new-promise or part-payment section, and the phrases new promise, part payment, partial payment, revive and promise in writing appear nowhere in it. Neither does the bare word promise. Two statutes speak to a debtor’s promise or payment without reviving a stale claim: RSA 506:2-a requires a promise to pay a debt released by a bankruptcy discharge to be made after the discharge, in writing and signed; and, where no demand for payment is made to the maker, RSA 382-A:3-118(b) bars enforcement of a demand note once neither principal nor interest has been paid for 10 continuous years.
What is the statute of limitations on a promissory note in New Hampshire?
Name the instrument first, because RSA 382-A:3-118 sets seven periods rather than one. A note payable at a definite time gets six years after the due date stated in the note, or after an accelerated due date, under subsection (a). A note payable on demand gets six years after the demand under subsection (b), and where no demand is made, enforcement is barred once neither principal nor interest has been paid for a continuous period of 10 years. Checks, drafts, certificates of deposit and Article 3 warranty claims have their own subsections.
How long is a New Hampshire judgment good for?
RSA 508:5 allows twenty years from accrual to bring an action of debt upon a judgment, a recognizance or a contract under seal – a filing deadline for a fresh suit, not a statement of how long a judgment may be enforced. RSA 511:55, I holds attached property until the expiration of 6 years from the time of rendering a judgment in the action in favor of the plaintiff on which he can take execution; paragraphs II and IV allow up to ten years where no judgment is involved, unless otherwise dissolved.
What does RSA 508:9 do with the time a debtor spent living outside New Hampshire?
RSA 508:9 excludes the time rather than stopping a clock, and both halves of its condition must be met: where the defendant in a personal action was absent from and residing out of the state at the time the cause of action accrued, or afterward, the time of such absence shall be excluded in computing the time limited for bringing the action. Against a three-year window that can be decisive, which is why a dated residency history is worth establishing first.
Does New Hampshire have its own debt collection law?
Yes. RSA chapter 358-C, Unfair, Deceptive or Unreasonable Collection Practices, dates from 1975 and runs to five sections: definitions, a general prohibition, prohibited acts, remedies and check collection charges. RSA 358-C:2 forbids a debt collector from collecting or attempting to collect a debt in an unfair, deceptive or unreasonable manner as defined in the chapter, and RSA 358-C:3 supplies that definition across twelve enumerated situations. It sets no limitations period, so it does not move RSA 508:4’s three years.
Before You Write the File Off
Before a New Hampshire account is written off as stale, find out where the debtor actually lived and between which dates – RSA 508:9 may have been holding part of the period the whole time. Tell us the account and the lawful reason behind the request. Contact us to start.
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