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Senate bill to tidy post‑ban language for child marriage gets brief hearing
Summary
Sen. Deborah Altschuler introduced SB 269, a technical cleanup requested by the Secretary of State to replace gendered terms and remove obsolete waiver language after last year’s child‑marriage ban; the registrar of vital records described the specific statutory fixes and no questions were raised at the hearing.
Senate Judiciary Committee members heard brief testimony on Senate Bill 269 on the afternoon of the committee’s hearing day, when Sen. Deborah Altschuler, representing District 24, introduced the measure requested by the Secretary of State’s office.
The bill would update statutory language left over after last year’s change to New Hampshire law that raised the minimum age of marriage to 18. Specifically, SB 269 replaces gendered terms “bride” and “groom” with neutral language such as “applicants,” removes references to a now‑removed waiver, and deletes cross‑references to obsolete waiver provisions.
“This is not a policy change, just some language cleanup,” Sen. Deborah Altschuler told the committee. She said the bill ensures “the ducks are in a row” after the prior session’s reforms.
Kristen Martino, the state registrar and director of vital records, testified in support and described the specific statutory edits. She told the panel, “As you know, the minimum age of marriage was raised to 18, and statutes concerning court issued waivers were done away with. … We are looking forward to removing [references] from our statutes as well.”
No committee members asked follow‑up questions during the hearing and no vote on the bill was taken that day. The sponsor and witness characterized the measure as remedial: it aligns wording across affected chapters so that references to waivers and older terms no longer remain in statute.
If the committee advances SB 269 it will go forward as a technical cleanup to align multiple RSA sections with the changes enacted by last year’s bill that eliminated child‑marriage waivers.
The record of this hearing contains the sponsor’s opening remarks and the registrar’s explanation; committee members recessed briefly into executive session later in the docket but did not take final action on SB 269 during this sitting.
