Updated September 5, 2026. Quick answer: New Hampshire’s elective share is not the one-third-of-everything, marriage-length figure most national pages describe. with surviving children: 1/3 of personalty and 1/3 of real estate. No children but a parent or sibling survives: $10,000 of personalty plus $10,000 of real estate, plus 1/2 of the remainder. No children, parent, or sibling: $10,000 plus $2,000 for each full year of marriage, plus 1/2 of the remainder.
What New Hampshire actually sets out
| What the statute sets out | What it says |
|---|---|
| RSA 560:10 (schedule) | “If there are children of the deceased surviving (whether by the surviving spouse or by previous marriage) or issue of any deceased children, one-third part of the personalty and one-third part of the real estate.” |
| The share and what it is measured against | with surviving children: 1/3 of personalty and 1/3 of real estate. No children but a parent or sibling survives: $10,000 of personalty plus $10,000 of real estate, plus 1/2 of the remainder. No children, parent, or sibling: $10,000 plus $2,000 for each full year of marriage, plus 1/2 of the remainder; measured against the decedent’s real and personal probate estate; not an augmented estate. |
| Regime type | a tiered formula that varies by which relatives survive |
| Can it be waived | waivable via a prenuptial/postnuptial agreement under RSA 460:2-a (written, voluntary, full financial disclosure) |
| Time limit to file | waiver/release must be filed in the probate office within 6 months after appointment of the executor or administrator |
How it works in practice
- The share is measured against the decedent’s real and personal probate estate; not an augmented estate.
- No. This state’s formula is deliberately built to reach revocable trusts, payable-on-death accounts and other lifetime transfers, precisely so the elective share cannot be defeated by moving assets out of probate before death.
- Waiver: Waivable via a prenuptial/postnuptial agreement under RSA 460:2-a (written, voluntary, full financial disclosure).
- The election has to be affirmatively filed on a deadline: waiver/release must be filed in the probate office within 6 months after appointment of the executor or administrator.
The national picture, including the Uniform Probate Code sliding-scale schedule that a minority of states actually use, is on the elective share calculator page; this page is the record for New Hampshire specifically, and its own numbers above should be used instead of the calculator’s national default for a New Hampshire estate. The one thing that reliably defeats an elective share in every state that has one is explained on whether a prenup can waive the elective share. A newly widowed reader working through the fuller list of irreversible decisions, of which this is one, can start from the surviving spouse checklist.
What this page does not settle
- This session confirmed the core figure above against a primary or verbatim-mirror source, with one open point: RSA 460:2-a described only via secondary sources.
- A state can amend or repeal this section without the page around it changing, and a detail specific to a reader’s own situation, such as a pending divorce, a premarital agreement, or property held jointly with right of survivorship, can change which part of the statute actually applies.
- Whether a revocable trust changes the outcome in New Hampshire is explained above; that answer is specific to this state and does not generalize to any other one.
- Every quotation here was read against the source on September 5, 2026. Nothing on this page is legal advice, and the exact dollar or percentage amount a court awards depends on facts this page cannot know.
Whether this statute reaches a given family’s actual facts is decided by a court, not by this page. Nothing here is legal advice, and no one should sign a waiver or forgo an election on the strength of a web page.
Sources
The sources above were retrieved and read against the state text on September 5, 2026. Every quotation on this page was checked against those bytes.