Massachusetts Creditor Claim Period

Updated September 7, 2026. Quick answer: In Massachusetts, if notice is never published, the absolute deadline is 1 year from the date of death.

What is the creditor-claim deadline in Massachusetts?

“a personal representative shall not be held to answer to an action by a creditor of the deceased unless such action is commenced within 1 year after the date of death of the deceased and unless, before the expiration of such period, the process in such action has been served by delivery in hand upon such personal representative or service thereof accepted by him or a notice…has been filed with the register.”

Source: Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 190B, § 3-803(a)

What makes Massachusetts different

Massachusetts deliberately declined to adopt the UPC’s publication-triggered short bar (its own § 3-801 is left ‘Reserved’), so a flat 1-year-from-death deadline applies identically whether or not the estate ever publishes notice.

Does this deadline apply the same way if the estate never opens probate?

These deadlines are creatures of the probate process itself; they run once an estate is opened (by publication, mailing, appointment, or the grant of letters, depending on Massachusetts’s own rule above). A creditor of a decedent whose estate never enters probate at all is not cut off by this particular statute, though the underlying debt’s own ordinary statute of limitations still applies.

Sources

Every statute quoted on this page was read directly from the state’s own legislature/code site this session, or, where that site blocked automated access, from a reputable legal-citation mirror quoting the same official text with its official citation (disclosed below). General information, not legal advice; the exact deadline in a given estate can turn on facts (whether a personal representative was appointed, whether notice was ever published or mailed) that only your own probate court file can confirm.