Is Coercive Control Recognized in New Hampshire?

What HB 1522 actually is

HB 1522's final title is “(New Title) relative to amending and adding definitions related to the protection of persons from domestic violence and relative to the domestic violence fatality review committee.” It was sponsored by Rep. Jay Markell along with six House cosponsors, moved through the Criminal Justice and Public Safety committee, passed the House and Senate with a committee amendment, and was enrolled before being signed. Per the bill's own analysis, it does two things: first, it adds to the types of abuse a court can consider in deciding whether to issue a domestic violence protective order; second, and unrelated to coercive control, it changes when the Department of Justice's domestic violence fatality review committee can review a case involving potential civil litigation. Only the first part matters here.

The definition: RSA 173-B:1, II-a

HB 1522 inserts a new paragraph into RSA 173-B:1, New Hampshire's definitions section for its protection-from-abuse chapter. Paragraph II-a now defines “coercive control” as “a pattern of conduct that includes, but is not limited to, a manifestation of the defendant's intent to threaten, intimidate, harass, isolate, coerce, control, or compel compliance, which causes the petitioner to reasonably fear for his or her physical safety.” The statute then lists qualifying acts, which “may include, but are not limited to”: isolating the petitioner from friends, relatives, or other sources of support; depriving the petitioner of basic needs; controlling, regulating, or monitoring the petitioner's activities, communications, movements, finances, economic resources, or access to services, “including through technological means”; compelling the petitioner to engage in a specific activity, including criminal conduct; threatening to publish — or actually publishing — sensitive personal information about the petitioner, other than a good-faith report to law enforcement; and, as a catch-all, any single act intended to threaten, intimidate, harass, isolate, coerce, control, or compel compliance through causing reasonable fear for physical safety, where that act consists of harming or threatening to harm a child, relative, or animal belonging to the petitioner.

The custody connection — indirect, but with a real statutory cross-reference

RSA 173-B is New Hampshire's domestic violence protective-order chapter, not its custody statute. Custody — “parental rights and responsibilities” in New Hampshire's terminology — is governed separately by RSA 461-A. HB 1522 did not touch RSA 461-A, and it doesn't mention “coercive control” anywhere in that chapter. So this isn't a direct custody-factor amendment the way Utah's H.B. 303 added coercive control to its parent-time and custody factor lists by name.

But the connection isn't purely inferential either — there's an explicit cross-reference. RSA 461-A:6, I sets out the best-interest factors a New Hampshire court must consider when determining parental rights and responsibilities. Factor (j) reads: “Any evidence of abuse, as defined in RSA 173-B:1, I or RSA 169-C:3, II, and the impact of the abuse on the child and on the relationship between the child and the abusing parent.” That citation — “RSA 173-B:1, I” — points directly at the same “abuse” paragraph HB 1522 amended to add the “may consider coercive control” sentence. So the chain runs: RSA 461-A:6(I)(j) tells a custody court to weigh evidence of abuse as RSA 173-B:1, I defines it, and that definition now explicitly permits a court to factor in coercive control when assessing abuse. Nothing in RSA 461-A was rewritten, and a custody court isn't instructed to consider “coercive control” as its own labeled factor — but the statute it does point to was just amended to name coercive control as something relevant to that inquiry. That's a narrower link than a direct custody-factor amendment, and a more concrete one than Maine's, where the custody statute borrows a general “domestic abuse” definition that happens to have picked up the word “coercion” in one clause.

A bill-number mix-up worth flagging

If you see New Hampshire's 2026 coercive-control law referred to elsewhere as HB 1576, that's a different bill — HB 1576 is “An Act relative to the enforcement of criminal restitution obligations” (Chapter 233), and has nothing to do with domestic violence definitions. The coercive-control language lives in HB 1522, Chapter 230, confirmed against both the enrolled bill text and the current text of RSA 173-B:1 as published by the New Hampshire General Court.