Short answer. Not safely. If a debtor already in a state of insolvency pays a debt that was not yet demandable, the Civil Code makes that payment rescissible, so the other creditors can have it undone and the money returned to the pool available to everyone.
What the law says
Payments made in a state of insolvency for obligations to whose fulfillment the debtor could not be compelled at the time they were effected, are also rescissible.
Civil Code, Article 1382 — Rescissible Payments in Insolvency. Read the full provision →
The two facts that make a payment attackable
Both must be present. First, the debtor must have been in a state of insolvency when he paid - unable, in practical terms, to meet his obligations as they fell due, not merely short of cash for a month. Second, the debt paid must have been one to whose fulfillment the debtor could not be compelled at the time: a loan not yet due, an obligation subject to a condition that had not happened, a debt whose period had not expired. Paying a debt that was already demandable is not caught by this rule, however unfairly it may strike the creditors who were left waiting. It is the prematurity, coupled with insolvency, that the law targets.
What the rule is protecting
An insolvent debtor's remaining property is, in substance, a common fund. A debtor who sees collapse coming and clears the debt of a relative, a business partner, or a friendly supplier ahead of schedule is quietly moving value out of that fund and choosing who gets paid. The law does not treat that as generosity or good faith; it treats it as a preference the debtor had no right to grant. Rescission restores what was taken out so that the assets are distributed according to the law's own order of preference rather than the debtor's private loyalties. Notably, the favoured creditor need not have known anything - the payment can be undone even where he acted innocently, because he received what he was not yet entitled to demand.
What rescission does and does not achieve
Rescission here is a subsidiary remedy in the Civil Code's scheme: it is meant to repair the damage suffered by creditors who cannot otherwise collect, and it undoes the payment only to the extent needed for that. It does not extinguish the debt that was paid; the favoured creditor returns the money and takes his place among the other claimants for the same amount. It also does not brand anyone a criminal by itself. And it is time-bound - actions to rescind must be brought within the period the Civil Code fixes for rescissory actions, so a creditor who sits on the information can lose the remedy entirely.
If you are the debtor, or the creditor who got paid
A business in distress should not settle early with a chosen creditor on the assumption that a paid debt is a closed matter; it can be reopened, and the pattern of payments will be examined. Where the debtor's finances are genuinely failing, the orderly routes are the rehabilitation and liquidation proceedings under the Financial Rehabilitation and Insolvency Act (Republic Act No. 10142), which have their own rules on preferences and on transactions made before the filing. A creditor who has been paid early should keep the records showing when the obligation actually fell due. This is general legal information rather than advice on your accounts.