New Hampshire Judgment Collection
New Hampshire did not have a general post-judgment real estate lien statute until RSA 524:13 took effect on 1 January 2017, and the section it wrote is unusual in a way that matters to anyone holding an older judgment. The lien is not created by the judgment, and it is not created by the recording alone. Under 524:13(III) it is the recording of the certified copy together with the affidavit attesting to compliance with paragraph II that creates it – and paragraph II is a mailing requirement: at the time of recording the plaintiff shall mail a copy of all documents sent to the registry of deeds to the defendant’s address of record with the court, or to counsel if the defendant is represented. A New Hampshire creditor therefore cannot perfect security against land without an address, and the address the file holds may be years old. That is the problem this page is about. What we contribute is confined to the record: New Hampshire registries, court files and lawfully licensed data, opened only once a requester has supplied a reason the law recognises. This firm practises no law and collects nothing on anyone’s behalf; a description of a statute is not advice on your file.
Three Paragraphs, and the Order They Come In Is the Point
RSA 524:13(I) to (III), read together, make a mailing part of the security.
Paragraph I sets the mechanism and it is generous about timing. A judgment entered by any court in this state may be secured against real estate by recording or re-recording, at any time during the duration of the judgment, a certified copy of the judgment along with an affidavit in accordance with paragraph II, with the registry of deeds of the county in which the real estate is located. There is no deadline inside the judgment’s life and no limit on re-recording, which is what makes the section forgiving of a creditor who discovers property late.
Paragraph II is the condition. At the time of recording, the plaintiff shall mail a copy of all documents mailed to the registry of deeds to the defendant’s address of record with the court, by first class mail – or, if the defendant is represented by counsel, a copy shall be mailed to counsel in the same manner.
Paragraph III then joins them: “The recording of the certified copy of the judgment, along with the affidavit attesting to compliance with paragraph II, shall create a judgment lien on all real estate of the defendant in the county of recording.” It adds two limits in the same breath – the lien is subject to all applicable exemptions from attachment and execution, and it is subordinate to any other liens of record entitled to priority on the date of recording.
So the affidavit is not a formality attached to a lien that already exists; it is one of the two documents whose recording brings the lien into being. And the fact the affidavit attests to is a letter sent to an address in the court file. New Hampshire has ten counties and ten registries; a lien recorded in Hillsborough does nothing about land in Coos. The two research questions the section generates are therefore quite precise: which counties hold real estate recorded in this defendant’s name, and is the address of record still a real address for this person.
Paragraph III’s subordination rule is worth a second look as well. In many states a judgment lien takes its place in the queue and argues about it later. Here the statute itself concedes priority to anything already of record and entitled to it on the day of recording, which makes the state of the title on the recording date – existing mortgages, earlier liens, the order of everything in the grantor index – a matter to establish before recording rather than after.
The Short Version
New Hampshire secures a judgment against land by recording a certified copy of the judgment together with an affidavit at the registry of deeds for the county where the land sits, and it is that pair of documents recorded together that creates the lien. The affidavit attests that a copy of everything sent to the registry was mailed to the defendant’s address of record with the court. The lien has no duration of its own: RSA 524:13(IV) gives it life for as long as a suit may be maintained on the judgment under RSA 508:5, which allows twenty years from the accrual of the cause of action. Recording may be done, or repeated, at any time during the judgment’s life, and it reaches only the county where it is filed. Establishing which counties hold property and whether the court’s address still finds the defendant is the practical starting point.
Watch: Why the Address of Record Matters
The affidavit, the registry, and a lien with no number of its own.
Watch Overview
The Lien Has No Number. It Borrows One From a Limitation Statute.
524:13(IV) points at RSA 508:5, and 508:5 runs from accrual rather than entry.
Most states give a judgment lien a term – five years, seven, ten, twenty – and then provide a way to extend it. New Hampshire does neither. RSA 524:13(IV) says that unless the judgment is satisfied or discharged, or the lien is otherwise removed or altered, the lien created under paragraphs I to III “shall remain in force and effect for as long as a suit may be maintained upon the judgment under RSA 508:5.”
RSA 508:5 is headed Specialties and is a single line: “Actions of debt upon judgments, recognizances, and contracts under seal may be brought within 20 years after the cause of action accrued, and not afterward.” That is where New Hampshire’s twenty years live, and note the trigger. It is not entry, not docketing, not recording and not rendition – it is the accrual of the cause of action on the judgment. On a judgment payable at once those dates sit close together; on a judgment whose obligation matures later, or where the enforceability question turns on when a duty arose, they do not, and the difference is the difference between a live lien and a dead one.
Two things follow from a lien defined by reference rather than by a number. First, there is nothing to renew – no affidavit of renewal, no revival petition, no scire facias for the lien as such – because there is no separate term to run out. What a creditor does instead, if a new county becomes relevant, is record again there under paragraph I, which the section permits at any time during the judgment’s life. Second, the lien’s death and the judgment’s death are the same event, which means the calendar to keep is 508:5’s and not the registry’s.
New Hampshire does retain a scire facias, but for a different purpose. RSA 524:7 provides that the plaintiff or the plaintiff’s administrator, and any other persons interested, may from time to time have scire facias upon such judgment, and execution shall be awarded them for any further sums which may be equitably due. That is a route to further sums, not a lien-extension mechanism, and confusing the two is a common way to misread this chapter. Our general note on judgment renewal and the comparison in how long a judgment stays good in each state set the New Hampshire position beside the states that do require a renewal filing.
One New Hampshire Exemption That Is About Judgments, Not About Property
RSA 524:12 defeats a class of judgment outright, and it names a shipyard.
Exemption schedules belong elsewhere, and this page does not restate one – New Hampshire’s list of exempt goods and property, and the mechanics of periodic payment orders and trustee process, are set out in our New Hampshire asset exemptions from creditors and New Hampshire wage garnishment laws references. But one provision sits in the judgments chapter itself and is defined by the character of the judgment rather than the character of the property, so it belongs here.
RSA 524:12, added in 1994, provides that all property in this state of a judgment debtor, where the judgment is in favour of any state for failure to pay that state’s income tax assessed on benefits received from a pension or other retirement plan, or with respect to income earned by an employee at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, shall be exempt from attachment, garnishment of wages, trustee process, or forced sale under process of any court – and no such judgment or execution based on it shall be a lien on such property.
That last clause is the reason it matters on a page about liens. It does not merely make property hard to take; it stops the lien attaching at all. A sister-state income tax judgment of that description, recorded in a New Hampshire registry under 524:13, does not become security here. New Hampshire wrote the rule during the interstate fight over taxing former residents’ pension income, and the reference to a specific federal shipyard on the Maine border is a reminder that a great many people who work in one of these states live in the other.
Cross-border facts are the ordinary case in this corner of New England rather than the exception, and they change which state’s rules apply before they change anything else. Where a judgment has to travel, the sequence is a domestication question first: our note on domesticating foreign judgments sets out that order, and where a debtor has simply left, locating a judgment debtor who moved out of state covers the search. Where the debtor has gone the other way and the file is now a California problem, our California judgment collection page covers a state that runs on entry and a wholly different lien mechanism.
Discharge Is a Duty With Teeth on Both Sides
524:13(V) and (VI) put costs on a plaintiff who will not release and sanctions on anyone who lies to get one.
When a judgment secured by a 524:13 lien is satisfied, paragraph V requires the plaintiff or the plaintiff’s attorney to deliver a discharge to the defendant or to the owner of the encumbered real estate; the defendant or owner then causes it to be recorded and pays the register of deeds the recording fee established under RSA 478:17-g. If the plaintiff fails to comply, the defendant is entitled to recover the amount of reasonable costs and legal fees incurred as a result.
Paragraph VI supplies the backstop. If the plaintiff fails to deliver a discharge within thirty days of receiving a request, or if other exigent circumstances require an immediate discharge, the court in which the judgment was rendered may issue the discharge on proof that the judgment has been paid in full – and the statute enumerates what proof will do: a bank check, a certified check, an attorney’s client funds account check bearing no indication of a stop payment order or return for insufficient funds, or other equivalent documentary evidence of receipt of payment. The discharge must contain the names of the plaintiff and defendant, the date and amount of the judgment, the name of the underlying case and case number if any, and the book and page of the recording of the judgment lien; when recorded it is a complete release of the lien. And anyone who induces a court to execute such a discharge on the basis of information and statements known to be false is responsible for all costs and fees incurred by the opposing party, plus such additional sanctions as the court in its discretion deems appropriate.
The book and page requirement in VI(b) is a small practical trap. A discharge cannot be drafted without knowing exactly where the lien was recorded, which is another reason to hold a clean record of what was filed, in which county, and when – and a reason that a creditor recording in several counties should expect to discharge in several counties too.
What We Establish Before Anything Is Recorded
Facts with sources and dates. The recording, the affidavit and the advice are counsel’s.
Everything above is general information about how New Hampshire’s judgments chapter reads. What it means for one particular judgment is a question for the lawyer holding the file. Nobody here records a certified copy at a registry of deeds, swears the paragraph II affidavit, moves for periodic payments, seeks a scire facias, or approaches a judgment debtor about money. Nor do we advise on whether an address is still the defendant’s address of record, which is a question about the court file and a question for the lawyer holding it.
What we do is establish the underlying facts. Where is this person now, and can that be confirmed against more than one independent record. Which of New Hampshire’s ten counties hold real estate recorded in the name, so that the right registries are identified before anything is filed rather than after. Whether the person is still in the state at all, and if not, where the trail leads. Each answer comes with the record it came from and the date it was checked, so it can be tested rather than trusted.
None of it begins without a stated basis. Before a New Hampshire search starts, the requester has to say what lawful reason sits behind it – enforcing a judgment, serving a party, identifying an asset – and the search then runs on New Hampshire public records and lawfully licensed data and nothing else. The methods are correspondingly plain: nobody pretexts, nobody adopts a false identity, and nobody gives a registry clerk, a town office or a payroll department a misleading account of who wants to know. This firm is not a law practice or a collection agency.
Two answers never change. Asked to supply something for a tenancy decision, a hiring or promotion decision, or a credit or insurance decision, the answer is no: this firm is not a consumer reporting agency, its work product is not a consumer report, and a requester who needs one is pointed to a provider regulated to issue it. Asked to find a person whose circumstances suggest they have left a relationship, hold a protective order, or would be endangered by being located, the answer is also no, and we give the reason rather than let the request drift. A New Hampshire judgment is not a key to either door.
Our Commitment
We report what the New Hampshire registries and court records actually establish, what they only point toward, and what they do not cover – each with its source and the date it was checked. If the county records will not support a conclusion, we say so rather than dress an inference up as a finding, and we will tell you when further searching is unlikely to move the answer.
New Hampshire Judgment Questions
How does a judgment become a lien on real estate in New Hampshire?
By recording. RSA 524:13(I) allows a judgment entered by any New Hampshire court to be secured against real estate by recording or re-recording a certified copy of the judgment along with an affidavit with the registry of deeds of the county where the real estate is located. Paragraph III provides that it is the recording of the certified copy together with the affidavit attesting to compliance with paragraph II that creates the lien, on all the defendant’s real estate in that county.
What does the affidavit under RSA 524:13 have to attest to?
Compliance with paragraph II, which requires that at the time of recording the plaintiff mail a copy of all documents mailed to the registry of deeds to the defendant’s address of record with the court, by first class mail – or to counsel in the same manner if the defendant is represented. Because paragraph III makes the recording of the affidavit part of what creates the lien, the mailing is a component of the security rather than a courtesy.
How long does a New Hampshire judgment lien last?
It has no term of its own. RSA 524:13(IV) provides that, unless the judgment is satisfied or discharged or the lien is otherwise removed or altered, the lien remains in force for as long as a suit may be maintained upon the judgment under RSA 508:5. RSA 508:5 allows actions of debt upon judgments to be brought within twenty years after the cause of action accrued, and not afterward.
Is there a renewal filing for a New Hampshire judgment lien?
There is nothing to renew, because there is no separate term. Paragraph I permits recording or re-recording at any time during the duration of the judgment, so a creditor who identifies property in a further county records there rather than renewing anything. RSA 524:7’s scire facias is a route to execution for further sums equitably due, not a mechanism for extending a lien.
Does recording in one New Hampshire county reach land elsewhere in the state?
No. Paragraph III creates a lien on the defendant’s real estate in the county of recording. New Hampshire has ten counties and ten registries of deeds, so a creditor who records in one county has security only there, and identifying every county in which the defendant holds recorded real estate is a records question that has to be answered first.
Where does a New Hampshire judgment lien sit in priority?
Behind anything already there. RSA 524:13(III) makes the lien subject to all applicable exemptions from attachment and execution and subordinate to any other liens of record entitled to priority on the date of recording. That puts the state of the title on the day of recording – existing mortgages and earlier recorded liens – at the centre of whether the lien is worth anything.
Are any New Hampshire judgments barred from becoming a lien at all?
Yes, one class. RSA 524:12 exempts all New Hampshire property of a judgment debtor from attachment, garnishment of wages, trustee process and forced sale where the judgment is in favour of any state for failure to pay that state’s income tax assessed on pension or other retirement plan benefits, or on income earned at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, and provides that no such judgment or execution based on it shall be a lien on that property.
What does your firm do on a New Hampshire judgment, and what will it not do?
We establish, from New Hampshire public records and lawfully licensed data, where a judgment debtor is, which counties hold real estate recorded in the name, and what the registries show – each finding with its source and the date checked. It does not extend to recording anything at a registry, swearing the paragraph II affidavit, appearing in court, advising, or approaching the debtor. The firm is not a law practice or a collection agency, and it is not a consumer reporting agency – its findings may not be used to screen a tenancy, decide a hire or promotion, or underwrite credit or insurance. Where an enquiry appears aimed at someone who would be endangered by being located, it is declined.
The Registry Needs an Address. So Does the Lien.
RSA 524:13 conditions a New Hampshire judgment lien on an affidavit that a copy went to the defendant’s address of record with the court. Give us the debtor and a lawful basis for asking, and you will get a current whereabouts, a documented view of the address of record, and the New Hampshire counties recording land in that name – sourced and dated, typically within 24 hours. Contact us and we will tell you what the registries can settle and what they cannot.
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