Short answer. No. Article 2035 lists future support among the matters on which no compromise is valid. A person cannot renounce support that has not yet fallen due, because the right exists to keep him alive and provided for. Support already accrued and unpaid is different — that is a money claim you may settle.

What the law says

No compromise upon the following questions shall be valid

Civil Code, Article 2035 — What Can Never Be Compromised. Read the full provision →

What the law says

Future support

Civil Code, Article 2035 — What Can Never Be Compromised. Read the full provision →

Future support cannot be bargained away

Article 2035 opens by declaring that No compromise upon the following questions shall be valid, and the fourth item on its list is Future support. A person entitled to support cannot validly waive, sell or settle away the support that has not yet fallen due, no matter how the agreement is worded or what he receives in exchange. Such a renunciation is void. The entitlement is not the kind of asset the holder is free to dispose of, because it is not really about money in the abstract — it is about the means of living, which the law does not permit a person to trade away in advance.

Why the law protects it

Support answers a continuing need — food, shelter, the necessities of life — and that need does not disappear because the person once signed a paper giving it up. If future support could be renounced, a dependant might, in a moment of pressure or poor judgement, sign away tomorrow's sustenance for a lump sum spent today, and then have nothing when the need arrived. The prohibition removes that temptation and that trap. It keeps the right alive precisely for the moments the holder most needs it, which is why it is placed beyond the reach of a compromise.

Accrued support is a different thing

The bar is on future support, and the distinction carries real weight. Support that has already fallen due and gone unpaid is no longer a matter of future sustenance — it has become an ordinary debt, a sum owed for a period already past. Arrears of that kind are a patrimonial claim, and the person owed them may compromise, reduce or settle them like any other money claim. So the same relationship can hold one right that cannot be touched and another, for the very same support, that can be freely negotiated, depending only on whether the period has passed.

Fixing an amount is not waiving the right

Parties often agree on how much support will be paid going forward, and that is not the same as renouncing it. Setting a figure by agreement arranges how the obligation is met; it does not extinguish the underlying entitlement, which survives and can be revisited if circumstances change, because support tracks need and means over time. What Article 2035 forbids is the giving up of the right itself. An agreement that quietly does that under the guise of settlement will not hold, so it is worth being clear which of the two any document actually attempts.

Related provisions

Note. Statute text quoted on this page is reproduced from the official enactment and is linked to the full provision. The explanation around it is general legal information from Vivas & Nobles Law Office, not legal advice. Whether it applies to your situation depends on facts only a lawyer reviewing them can assess.