American Mineral RegistryResearch & data

State law reference

Do Mineral Rights Expire in New Hampshire?

Do mineral rights expire in New Hampshire? No New Hampshire statute was found that ends a severed mineral interest for nonuse or under a marketable title act. RSA 477, the conveyancing chapter, has no mineral lapse or marketable title provision; RSA 477:3-b limits possibilities of reverter, rights of re-entry and executory interests, not mineral interests.

  • Release 2026.10.1
  • Reviewed October 1, 2026
  • CC BY 4.0

No statute found Researched and checked by American Mineral Registry by searching the text it could read, which turned up no statute on this point; review completed October 1, 2026. Reference research, not legal advice.

Rule type
No such statute found
Period
None
Ends without a surface owner step
Not applicable
Preservation filing
Not applicable
Forced pooling statute
No statute found
Surface damages statute
No statute found
Deceased or unlocated owner
Partly checked
Do Mineral Rights Expire in New Hampshire?: map of the 51 U.S. jurisdictions with New Hampshire marked and the 17 others that share its rule type, no such statute found shaded
New Hampshire is one of 18 jurisdictions that had no statute of these kinds in AMR’s search of the official code. Every jurisdiction’s rule type is on Mineral Rights by State.

How the rule works

No dormant mineral or marketable title statute identified. No New Hampshire statute was found that ends a severed mineral interest for nonuse or under a marketable title act. RSA 477, the conveyancing chapter, has no mineral lapse or marketable title provision; RSA 477:3-b limits possibilities of reverter, rights of re-entry and executory interests, not mineral interests. RSA 12-E is a mining permit and reclamation law for solid minerals.

Scope

Interests covered
Not applicable; no mechanism identified.
Minerals covered
Not applicable.
Enactment and amendments
No dormancy statute identified in the RSA chapters reviewed.
What AMR searched
Read the RSA title list and the chapter lists of Titles I, V, XII, XLVIII, L, LII and LV (archived 2025-10 to 2026-09), searching for mine, mining, mineral, oil, gas, petroleum, excavation, quarry, title, abandon, marketable, quiet and severed. Matches were RSA 12-E (Mining and Reclamation), 155-E (Local Regulation of Excavations), 72-B (Excavation Tax), 78-C (Refined Petroleum Products Tax) and 508 (Limitation of Actions). Read the full merged text of RSA 477 and RSA 12-E. A full text search of the RSA was not possible because gc.nh.gov was not available.

What “none found” means. AMR searched the official code for a dormant mineral, abandonment, lapse or forfeiture statute and found none. That does not mean a mineral interest can never be lost: deeds, title defects, tax sales, adverse possession and other rules can still affect ownership, and they are outside this review.

Dates and what they mean

There is no statutory nonuse period to calculate for this jurisdiction under the rules AMR reviewed.

No lapse mechanism found, so there is no date to compute.

Deceased or unlocated owner

Partly checked What the law of New Hampshire says when the owner of record has died, is unknown, or cannot be found. It sets out the questions; it does not decide who owns an interest, whether a notice was valid, or whether an interest ended.

Why only partly checked. Still open: court, receivership or trust for missing owners.

No New Hampshire statute was found that ends a severed mineral interest for nonuse or addresses a deceased, unknown or unlocated mineral owner. RSA 12-E regulates solid mineral mining permits and reclamation and RSA 477 governs conveyances; neither has such a provision. General quiet title, probate, partition and unclaimed property law may apply to the interest and were not reviewed, and a whole code search was not possible.

Owner of record has died
Not addressed in the provisions read.
Current owner unknown
Not addressed in the provisions read.
Owner known but cannot be found
Not addressed in the provisions read.

How the nonuse rule treats these owners Not addressed in the provisions read

No New Hampshire statute ending a severed mineral interest for nonuse or under a marketable title act was found in the provisions read. Quiet title, probate and partition law may apply to the interest of a deceased, unknown or unlocated owner and were not reviewed.

Heirs, devisees and successors Not addressed in the provisions read

No mineral specific provision on heirs, devisees or successors was found in RSA 12-E or RSA 477.

Search required to find the owner Not addressed in the provisions read

No mineral specific search requirement was found in the provisions read.

Who gets notice, and how Not addressed in the provisions read

No mineral specific notice procedure for deceased, unknown or unlocated owners was found in the provisions read.

Notice by publication Not addressed in the provisions read

No mineral specific publication rule was found in the provisions read.

How the owner responds or preserves Not addressed in the provisions read

There is no lapse mechanism, so no preservation filing exists in the provisions read.

Court, receivership or trust for missing owners Not yet verified

No verified statement yet.

What a title review must establish

  1. Because no lapse statute was found, who holds record title to the mineral interest by deed, will or descent?
  2. If a court action is used to clear the interest, what notice to unknown heirs or unlocated owners did the court order?

Dates. The provisions read create no period or deadline concerning mineral owners. The rule finder does not calculate this period.

What AMR searched. Read: RSA 12-E (Mining and Reclamation) and RSA 477 (Conveyances of Realty), full merged chapter texts, through Internet Archive copies (June 10, 2026 and October 13, 2025) because gc.nh.gov was not available. Both were searched for unknown, cannot be located, whereabouts, heirs, missing and absent; no match concerned a mineral owner. The October review searched the chapter lists of Titles I, V, XII, XLVIII, L, LII and LV for mineral, oil, gas, title and quiet terms and found no dormant mineral, marketable title or pooling statute. A whole code full text search was not possible. Not reviewed: RSA 498:5-a and related quiet title procedure, probate, partition and unclaimed property law (RSA 471-C). A point marked not addressed means only that the provisions read do not address it; probate, quiet title and other general procedures may still apply and were not reviewed.

Not settled by this review.

Run a whole code full text search of the RSA for unknown or missing owner, receiver and escrow provisions near mineral, oil or gas once gc.nh.gov is reachable.

Whether RSA 471-C (unclaimed property) defines or treats mineral proceeds; not read.

Checked October 6, 2026. Also in the dormant mineral rule finder.

Forced pooling

No statute found No New Hampshire statute on oil and gas conservation, spacing or compulsory pooling was found.

Searched: Same chapter list review as for dormancy; no oil and gas production chapter appears in the titles reviewed.

Surface damages

No statute found No New Hampshire surface damages or split estate statute was found. RSA 12-E:3 only provides that a prospecting permit does not authorize entry on another's land without the landowner's written permission.

Searched: Same chapter list review as for dormancy, plus the full text of RSA 12-E.

Taxes

Broad personal income tax: no. New Hampshire repealed its interest and dividends tax, which reached only residents' interest and dividend income, for taxable periods beginning after December 31, 2024, and no other New Hampshire tax on individual income was found, so an individual's royalty income is not taxed by the state. Official text cited Source and notes.

Severance or production tax. Not part of AMR’s October 2026 tax review, which covered 25 producing states; that is not a finding that New Hampshire levies none. Use the state revenue agency’s own pages.

Not tax advice. Rates change and the cited source controls.

Sources for the dormant mineral rule

Each source was read on the date shown. Where an official site was not available, the official page was read through a dated Internet Archive copy and that is stated.

  1. RSA 12-E:1, VIIINew Hampshire General Court, Revised Statutes Annotated. Official statute. Read October 1, 2026, via Internet Archive snapshot June 10, 2026. Source ID SRC-NH-001.
    “"Mineral" means copper, gold, silver, diatomite, feldspar, garnet, lime, thorium, uranium, and any similar solid material or metal substance to be excavated or extracted from natural deposits or formations on or in the earth or in or underneath water”

Open questions for a specialist

This review did not settle these points. They are where a New Hampshire title attorney or landman should look first.

Titles not listed above were not searched; a mineral specific provision elsewhere in the RSA cannot be ruled out.

Amendments after the 2025 to 2026 snapshot dates were not checked.

Common questions

Can mineral rights lapse in New Hampshire?

A search of New Hampshire’s official code found no dormant mineral, lapse or forfeiture statute, so an interest does not lapse through nonuse under a statute of that kind. Deeds, tax sales and title rules can still affect ownership.

Does New Hampshire allow forced pooling?

A search of New Hampshire’s official code found no forced pooling statute. The scope of that search is under Forced pooling above.

Does New Hampshire require payment for surface damage?

A search of New Hampshire’s official code found no surface damages statute of that kind. Leases, deeds and general law can still give the surface owner a claim.

What changed

The June 2026 edition listed New Hampshire as Does not lapse, lapse period none. Release 2026.10 replaced that entry with the reviewed rule above, and retired the June risk score and ranking for every state. Release 2026.10.1 added the deceased or unlocated owner section. See all changes.

Cite this page

American Mineral Registry. "Do Mineral Rights Expire in New Hampshire?" U.S. Mineral Rights Law Atlas, release 2026.10.1, October 6, 2026. https://americanmineralregistry.com/research/states/do-mineral-rights-expire-in-new-hampshire

General information about statutes, not legal advice and not a title opinion. Facts about a specific interest decide the outcome. Published by American Mineral Registry, which also runs a commercial service for owners; see how the two relate.