N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. ch. 137-J · New Hampshire
New Hampshire: how to sign your advance directive
New Hampshire has one advance directive, and the chapter says so: it carries the durable power of attorney for health care and the living will in a single instrument, with a single form.
Why WearableDocs
In New Hampshire, the directive has to be found
It does not wait on delivery to a clinician to operate — but a document no one can produce when asked for is a document that fails in practice. WearableDocs puts the signed directive on a card you carry and a page that opens in seconds, instead of a phone call to whoever might know which drawer.
You answer a few questions — your name, your state, and what you refuse — and WearableDocs builds the directive. Print it, sign it, upload it. Changing your answers later is part of the plan, so nothing is locked in.
What New Hampshire asks
What you need to sign in New Hampshire
- Instruments
- One advance directive combining the durable power of attorney for health care and the living will
- Form
- Substantially the statutory form, with a mandatory disclosure statement delivered before execution (§137-J:13 I–II)
- Execution
- Two or more subscribing witnesses OR a notary public or justice of the peace (§137-J:14 I)
- May not witness
- Neither witness may be the agent or surrogate, the principal's spouse or heir at law, "a person entitled to any part of the estate of the principal upon death of the principal under a will, trust, or other testamentary instrument or deed in existence or by operation of law," the attending practitioner, or a person acting under the attending practitioner's direction or control. No more than one may be the principal's health or residential care provider or such a provider's employee (§137-J:14 I)
- May not be your agent
- A person may not exercise the authority of an agent or surrogate while serving as the principal's attending practitioner or a person acting under the attending practitioner's direct authority, or as a nonrelative employee of the principal's health care provider or residential care provider (§137-J:8)
- Copy rule
- No copy-equivalence rule found. The delivery duty may be discharged with "an original or copy," which is a rule about what satisfies the duty, not about what the copy is worth (§137-J:7)
- Delivery
- No delivery precondition. Authority "shall be in effect only when the principal lacks capacity to make health care decisions, as certified in the principal's medical record by the principal's attending practitioner" (§137-J:5). But New Hampshire separately puts a duty to deliver on whoever possesses the document — see below. The two are different things: one is a condition on operating, the other an obligation on a holder
- Who decides
- One attending practitioner, certified in the principal's medical record (§137-J:5). If the principal has no attending practitioner for reasons of religious or moral belief stated in the directive, the directive may name a person to certify in writing, acknowledged before a notary or justice of the peace (§137-J:5)
- Registry
- None
- Age
- No departure from 18 recorded. A witness must be a competent person 18 or older (§137-J:2); agents must be 18 or older (disclosure, §137-J:19)
- Reciprocity
- Yes — a DNR, POLST, durable power of attorney for health care, living will or similar document executed in another state and valid there "shall be as effective in this state as it would have been if executed according to the laws of this state" (§137-J:17)
- Pregnancy
- Yes, for the agent's authority — the disclosure statement states that agents cannot agree to the withholding of life-sustaining treatment if you are pregnant, unless it will severely harm you (§137-J:19)
- Revocation
- Written revocation delivered to the agent or surrogate or to a health care or residential care provider, signed and dated by the principal; or oral revocation in the presence of two or more witnesses, none of whom is disqualified from witnessing (§137-J:15)
- Oral instructions
- The directive itself is a document. An oral revocation in the presence of two or more witnesses is expressly effective (§137-J:15)
- Uninitialled box
- In the statutory form, the four statements of situations the principal "would consider excessively burdensome" stand unless the principal crosses out and initials the disagreement — leaving the box alone is the affirmative choice (§137-J:20)
- Provider may not require
- §137-J:3 I — no health care or residential care provider, plan or insurer may require any person to execute an advance directive, or require the issuance of a do not resuscitate order, as a condition of admission to a hospital, nursing home or residential care home, or as a condition of being insured for, or receiving, health or residential care services
- Surrogacy limit
- A surrogacy runs at most 180 days. The surrogate may act "for up to 180 days after being identified," and "the authority of the surrogate shall terminate after 180 days, unless the patient is determined to be actively dying" (§137-J:37)
- Carried device
- Yes — for the DNR order. "NH DNR" bracelet or necklace (§137-J:33). Nothing for the directive — see below
- Citation
- N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. ch. 137-J
Read from the enacted statute, 2026-09-18.
The instrument
What New Hampshire actually recognizes
Two features of this chapter are unusual enough that they decide the page.
The disclosure statement is mandatory. §137-J:13 I: "Every person wishing to execute an advance directive shall be provided with a disclosure statement substantially in the form set forth in RSA 137-J:19 prior to execution." And §137-J:13 II: a directive executed on or after the chapter's effective date "shall be substantially in the form set forth in RSA 137-J:20." That is a stronger form requirement than most states impose.
Delivery is a duty on whoever possesses the document. §137-J:7 puts it in the plainest terms in this set — not on the declarant, not on the provider, on whoever is holding the paper.
What the popular guides get wrong
Corrections for New Hampshire
"An advance directive is a private document you keep." New Hampshire does something almost no other state does: it puts a duty to deliver on whoever possesses the directive. §137-J:7 — a person who possesses a duly executed advance directive, or a revocation of one, "shall forthwith deliver an original or copy of the same" to the health care or residential care provider with which the principal is a patient, once it becomes known that the terms might become applicable. That is a statutory obligation attached to mere possession, not a filing suggestion and not a courtesy.
"The state form is optional." In New Hampshire the statutory form is mandatory in substance, and so is the disclosure that precedes it: §137-J:13 I requires the disclosure statement to be provided before execution, and §137-J:13 II requires the directive to be substantially in the statutory form. The state says "substantially," not "may."
Carried on you
What a WearableDocs card does in New Hampshire
WearableDocs is how your New Hampshire advance directive gets found. The chapter's device provision belongs to a different instrument — §137-J:33 recognises "do not resuscitate identification," which may be "a medical condition bracelet or necklace with the inscription of the person's name, date of birth in numerical form and 'NH Do Not Resuscitate' or 'NH DNR' on it." That reaches the DNR order, and nothing else. Your advance directive gets none of it.
New Hampshire's answer for the directive is §137-J:7, and it is the most direct one in this set. The duty does not fall on you, on your agent, or on the hospital. It falls on whoever is holding the document — "shall forthwith deliver." The word is forthwith.
That is the claim the page can make and no larger one: the card is how the document reaches the provider in the window the statute contemplates, from the hands that already have it.