Protective orders in New Hampshire.
Who can ask for one, what you have to show, what a judge can order, what it costs, and what happens if it is broken — quoted from New Hampshire’s own statutes, not summarized.
See a different stateNew Hampshire
New Hampshire issues protective orders under chapter 173-B of the Revised Statutes, "Protection of Persons From Domestic Violence". A temporary order can be made without the other person present, and a final order follows a hearing. Two features stand out: firearms surrender is mandatory on a finding of abuse, and extensions after the second year can run in blocks of up to five years.
What the judge can actually order
Firearms first — because it is mandatory
New Hampshire does something few states do: on a finding of abuse, the court must order the surrender of firearms. It is not one of the things a judge may consider. It follows the finding.
The defendant is also prohibited from purchasing, receiving, or possessing any deadly weapons and any and all firearms and ammunition for the duration of the order. Note that "deadly weapons" is wider than firearms alone.
When the order expires, the defendant can ask for the firearms back, but only through a court hearing at which the court decides whether they remain prohibited by law from having them. They are not simply handed back.
The rest of the relief
A final protective order may restrain the defendant from abuse, from contact, from damaging property and from entering the premises; grant custody of animals; and direct the relinquishment of deadly weapons.
Beyond that the court may order exclusive use of the residence; temporary custody of children; visitation on conditions that protect safety; financial support; attendance at a batterer’s intervention program; and monetary compensation for losses.
The compensation provision is the one people most often leave unclaimed. Losses caused by the abuse — medical costs, damaged property, lost earnings, moving expenses — are within what the court can order the defendant to pay. Bring the receipts.
The order after a hearing
One year, then one year, then five at a time
The court must find abuse on a preponderance of the evidence. A final order then runs:
The first extension runs one year after the expiration of the first order.
And then the ladder widens considerably. Subsequent extensions can each run up to five years, on the request of the plaintiff and at the discretion of the court.
So the pattern is one year, then one year, then blocks of up to five. New Hampshire does not make orders permanent — each extension needs a fresh motion and good cause — but after the second year the intervals get much longer, which means far fewer trips back to court.
Every extension is on the request of the plaintiff. Nothing renews itself. Diary the expiry date the day you receive the order, and file before it lapses.
If they break it
A class A misdemeanour — and a six-year escalation clock
The escalation is where New Hampshire departs from the usual pattern. Where a person commits an offense within six years of a prior conviction for violating a protective order, the charge for that later offense is bumped up one level — whatever the later offense happens to be:
— a class B felony may be charged as a class A felony;
— a class A misdemeanour may be charged as a class B felony;
— a class B misdemeanour may be charged as a class A misdemeanour;
— a violation may be charged as a class B misdemeanour.
That is not simply a repeat-violation rule. A past conviction for breaking a protective order raises the grading of a subsequent offense of any kind for six years. There is no enhanced charge where the later offense is already a class A felony or an unclassified felony.
The violation has to be knowing, so proof the defendant was aware of the order matters. Keep the proof of service.
Worth knowing about New Hampshire
The things that are different here
Firearms surrender is mandatory on a finding of abuse, and covers ammunition and other deadly weapons.
Firearms are not returned automatically when the order ends — the defendant must apply and the court must decide they are not otherwise prohibited.
One year, then one year, then up to five years per extension.
Monetary compensation for losses is available.
Custody of animals is expressly within the relief.
A protective order conviction raises the grading of any subsequent offense for six years.
Does this cover me? New Hampshire’s definitions — RSA 173-B:1
New Hampshire asks two questions in sequence: is this person a family or household member or an intimate partner, and does what they did fall inside the statutory list of abusive acts. Both have to be yes.
Who the statute covers
Spouses, ex-spouses, cohabitants, and relatives by blood or marriage — excluding minor children living with the defendant, who are dealt with under other law.
“persons currently or formerly involved in a romantic relationship, whether or not such relationship was ever sexually consummated.”
That second definition is worth reading twice. “Whether or not such relationship was ever sexually consummated” is New Hampshire closing a door that respondents in other states walk through — the argument that a dating relationship was not real enough to count. It does not matter here. Nor does living together: the intimate-partner route is separate from the household route.
What counts as abuse
The listed acts include assault, criminal threatening, sexual assault, interference with freedom, property destruction, unauthorized entry, harassment, and cruelty to animals — when committed by someone in one of the relationships above and where the conduct constitutes “a credible present threat to the petitioner’s safety.”
Two things stand out against other states. New Hampshire lists property destruction and cruelty to animals as abuse in their own right — harming a pet is not a side issue here, it is a ground. And the qualifier is “credible present threat.” Present. A judge is being asked about now, not only about what happened. If the incidents are older, be ready to explain what makes the threat current: recent contact, proximity, escalation, threats made since.
The emergency and temporary stages, and their timetable
Temporary orders without notice — RSA 173-B:4
The court may issue a temporary protective order ex parte “upon a showing of an immediate and present danger of abuse” — without notice to the defendant.
The out-of-hours route
New Hampshire lets a judge “issue such temporary orders by telephone or facsimile” where there is immediate danger. An order made that way is short-lived by design: it remains valid “until the close of the next regular court business day.”
So if police call a judge for you at two in the morning on a Friday, you have until the end of the next business day and no longer. That is the single most time-critical fact on this page. The order does not quietly roll on. You must go to the court on that next business day and file to keep protection in place.
The defendant’s right to be heard quickly
Where an ex parte order has been made in the ordinary way, the defendant can ask the court to review it, and the hearing is then “held no less than 3 business days and no more than 5 business days” after the request.
Note that this clock is triggered by the defendant, not by you. It is a floor as well as a ceiling — the three-business-day minimum exists so you are not ambushed into a hearing with no time to prepare. If you are served with notice of such a hearing, that is your window to gather messages, photographs, medical records and the names of anyone who saw or heard what happened.
▸ See how this compares — all 50 states, side by side
The part that is the same in every state
An order from one state works in all of them
This is federal law and it does not change at a state line. An order issued by one state, tribe or territory must be enforced by every other as if that state had issued it. And you do not have to register it in the new state first — registration is optional, not a precondition to enforcement.
The same section also says the enforcing state must not tell the restrained person that the order has been registered there unless the protected person asks it to, and must not publish anything online that would be likely to reveal the protected person’s identity or location.
The federal firearms rule needs a hearing first
This is the single most misunderstood point in the whole subject, and it cuts against what most people assume. The federal prohibition at 18 U.S.C. s. 922(g)(8) reaches a person subject to an order only where three things are true: the order was made after a hearing of which they had actual notice and at which they had a chance to take part; it restrains them in relation to an intimate partner or that partner’s child; and it either carries a credible-threat finding or expressly forbids the use of force.
So an emergency or ex parte order does not trigger the federal prohibition on its own — there has been no hearing yet. State law may go further, and many states do, which is why the state rule is set out on this page separately. In United States v. Rahimi (2024) the Supreme Court upheld s. 922(g)(8), holding that “When an individual has been found by a court to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of another, that individual may be temporarily disarmed consistent with the Second Amendment.”
This rule is narrower than it looks, and the detail matters. Who counts as an “intimate partner” is a defined term that excludes dating partners you never lived with; the two halves of the third condition are not equally settled after Rahimi; and there is a separate federal route based on convictions rather than orders, which does reach dating partners. We set all of it out, quoted from the United States Code, on one page: Guns and protection orders — the federal rule.
How does this state compare? Ten states do nothing at all about firearms on a protection order; fourteen prohibit possession but give the court no way to collect them. All fifty side by side: which states actually take the guns.
You should not be charged for this — in any state
This is settled, and it is worth knowing before you walk into a courthouse. Under 34 U.S.C. s. 10450, a state applying for STOP grant funding must certify to the Attorney General that its "laws, policies, and practices do not require" a victim to bear the costs associated with the filing, issuance, registration, modification, enforcement, dismissal, withdrawal or service of a protection order or a petition for one — nor the costs of filing criminal charges, or of warrants and witness subpoenas. A jurisdiction that does charge has its funds withheld and redistributed to the states that do not.
Every state receives STOP funding and every state has certified compliance. The practical consequence, in the words of the National Center on Protection Orders and Full Faith & Credit, is that victims "should not be required to pay such costs in any state". That covers having the papers served on the other person, which is the charge people are most often asked for.
Two honest qualifications. The provision does not stop a court charging the respondent — many states order costs against them, and that is permitted. And it is a funding condition rather than a direct federal ban, so what a clerk does on a given day can still be wrong. If you are asked to pay a fee for any of the things listed above, you can say that your state has certified under 34 U.S.C. s. 10450 that it does not charge for them. Advocates can also raise it with the National Center on Protection Orders and Full Faith & Credit on 1-800-903-0111, prompt 2.
Where this state’s own statute says so expressly, that is quoted above.
Authority: RSA ch. 173-B, "Protection of Persons From Domestic Violence." Relief, duration, extension and firearms at RSA 173-B:5. Violation of protective order and penalty at RSA 173-B:9. Checked 29 Aug 2026.
How we checked this page
Every quotation above was read in the source named in the Authority line, not taken from a summary or another website. Where a source would not open, we say so at the point we relied on something else.
On this date we also re-checked every section cited above for repeal, renumbering or amendment since 2024. That sweep is not decorative: it is what caught North Dakota’s protection order chapter being repealed and replaced, Nebraska’s moving to an entirely new title, and a dozen 2025 and 2026 amendments that most published guidance has not yet picked up.
Nothing is outstanding on the main questions for New Hampshire. What we cannot promise is that nothing has changed since this date. Quote the words with confidence; check a section number before you put it in a filing. And if anything here does not match what a clerk or judge tells you, the court is right and we are wrong — tell us and we will fix it.
We keep a public record of every time we have got the law wrong on these pages, what caused it, and how long it was live: where we were wrong.
If there are children
What New Hampshire presumes about custody, and the emergency jurisdiction that exists when someone has to leave the state.