Updated September 4, 2026. Quick answer: New Hampshire’s child-liability provision is specifically RSA 167:3, which can compel an adult child to contribute to a parent’s public assistance and enforces noncompliance as civil contempt; a related grandparent-liability section was repealed as recently as 2024.
What New Hampshire actually sets out
| What the statute sets out | What it says |
|---|---|
| N.H. RSA 167:3 | “Upon the request of the commissioner of health and human services, any such father, mother, stepfather, stepmother, son, daughter, husband or wife shall provide the support of the person assisted under this chapter or RSA 161, or contribute thereto. Should such relative refuse to comply with such request, the commissioner… may bring an appropriate proceeding in the superior court… to compel such support or contribution thereto.” |
| Civil, enforced as contempt | “Failure to comply with any such order, without good cause as determined by the court at a hearing, shall be deemed contempt of court and punished accordingly. Such proceedings shall be brought by the attorney general or the county attorney for the county in which any such relative resides…” |
| A narrower, older sibling section, RSA 167:2, is not the one that reaches children | RSA 167:2 lets the state recover assistance already paid, but its own text names only father, mother, husband, or wife as liable, not son or daughter, and its parent-recovery reach was narrowed to minor children by a 2013 amendment; RSA 167:3, last amended in 1995, is the section that actually names son and daughter as compellable for a parent’s support. |
| Good cause defense | The statute allows non-compliance without penalty for good cause as determined by the court at a hearing, a standard the statute leaves to judicial discretion rather than defining. |
| A related repeal worth noting | RSA 167:3-a, Liability of Grandparents, was repealed by 2024, 74:1, effective August 13, 2024, narrowing New Hampshire’s filial-type liability as recently as two years before this page was built, while leaving RSA 167:3’s child liability intact. |
How it works in practice
- This is a compel-support order, not a criminal charge, brought by the attorney general or county attorney at the state welfare commissioner’s request, and it attaches only once a relative refuses a direct request to contribute.
- The threshold is the same more than sufficient to provide a reasonable subsistence compatible with decency and health language used elsewhere in the same chapter, there is no separate numeric test in Sec. 167:3 itself.
- New Hampshire is actively narrowing this area of law, not expanding it, the grandparent-liability section is gone as of 2024, even as the parent-child section from 1995 remains on the books unchanged.
What a filial responsibility statute is, why most of them sit unused, and which state is the one with documented recent enforcement is explained on the filial responsibility laws by state page. How this fits alongside the other two mechanisms that can turn a parent’s medical debt into a living person’s debt is explained on who actually owes medical bills after a death, and what a nursing home may and may not ask a family member to sign at admission is on the admission agreement traps page. This page is the record for New Hampshire.
What this page does not settle
- No reported New Hampshire Supreme Court or Superior Court opinion applying either RSA 167:2 or 167:3 to an actual family was found; this page cannot say how often, or whether, the compel-support process in RSA 167:3 has ever actually been used.
- This page reads the state’s own current code and 1 other primary source. A state can amend or repeal this section without the page around it changing, and a detail specific to your situation, such as a pending Medicaid application or a prior period of estrangement, can change which part of the statute applies.
- A statute existing is not the same question as whether it has ever been used. Enforcement history, where it exists at all, is noted on this page; where none was found, that is stated plainly rather than left blank.
- Every quotation here was read against the source on September 4, 2026. Nothing on this page is legal advice, and the statute’s own defenses and procedural requirements matter as much as its liability language.
Whether this statute actually reaches a given family’s situation is decided by a court on the specific facts, not by this page. Nothing here is legal advice, and no one should sign anything or send money on the strength of a web page.
Sources
- N.H. RSA 167:2 and 167:3 (New Hampshire General Court)
- N.H. RSA 167:3-a, repealed 2024 (New Hampshire General Court)
The sources above were retrieved and read against the state text on September 4, 2026. Every quotation on this page was checked against those bytes.