Short answer. The prescriptive period starts running from the date of the last payment you actually received. Article 1151 of the Civil Code provides that actions to enforce an obligation to pay principal with interest or annuity prescribe counting from the last payment of the annuity or interest, not from when the annuity was first set up.
What the law says
The time for the prescription of actions which have for their object the enforcement of obligations to pay principal with interest or annuity runs from the last payment of the annuity or of the interest.
Civil Code, Article 1151 — Prescription of Interest and Annuity Actions. Read the full provision →
The clock runs from the last payment, not the annuity's start
Article 1151 fixes a specific starting point for counting the prescriptive period: the time for the prescription of actions which have for their object the enforcement of obligations to pay principal with interest or annuity runs from the last payment of the annuity or of the interest. That means the date to focus on is the last time you actually received a payment, not the date your relative first set up the annuity and not the date any earlier installment fell due while payments were still being made.
Why the last payment is the anchor point
An annuity is a continuing arrangement of periodic payments, and Article 1151 treats each payment actually made as keeping the obligation current. So long as payments continue, however irregularly, the right to sue for the annuity has not yet begun to prescribe. It is only once payments stop for good that the article gives you a fixed reference date, and that date is the last payment you were given, not any of the missed installments that followed it.
Applying this to your relative's annuity
Since your relative paid you for a time and then the payments stopped, the last payment you actually received is the date from which the period for suing to collect starts running. If several installments have since fallen due and gone unpaid, those missed payments do not each reset or restart the clock under this article; the counting point remains the last payment that was in fact made to you.
What Article 1151 does not tell you
This article fixes only the starting point of the count, not how long the period lasts before your action is barred. It also does not address what happens if no payment was ever made at all, since it speaks in terms of a last payment having occurred. For the actual length of time you have to sue once that starting date is fixed, you would need to look at the specific prescriptive period that applies to the kind of obligation your relative's annuity created.
Cases citing this provision
These Supreme Court decisions cite the provision above. We list them so you can read them yourself; the summaries of what each decided are not ours to give.
- B & I Realty Co., Inc. vs. Teodoro Caspe, et al, G.R. No. 146972, January 29, 2008 — read the decision on LawPhil →