Short answer. No. Civil Code Article 1248 says a creditor cannot be compelled to receive partial payment unless the parties expressly agreed to allow it. You can insist on payment in full, with one exception: if the debt is part liquidated and part unliquidated, the liquidated part can be demanded and paid on its own.
What the law says
Unless there is an express stipulation to that effect, the creditor cannot be compelled partially to receive the prestations in which the obligation consists.
Civil Code, Article 1248 — No Partial Payment. Read the full provision →
Full payment is the default rule
Article 1248 is written from the creditor's side, and it protects you by default: “the creditor cannot be compelled partially to receive the prestations in which the obligation consists.” A debtor who offers half of what is owed, expecting you to take it and chase the rest later, is not making a valid tender of payment under this rule. You are entitled to refuse a partial payment and hold out for the whole amount, exactly as the obligation defines it.
The debtor is bound the same way
The rule runs both directions. Article 1248 also provides that “neither may the debtor be required to make partial payments.” So a creditor cannot turn around and demand installments where none were agreed either. Whatever the obligation calls for — a single lump sum, or payments broken into stages — is what each side is entitled to insist on, unless they later agree, expressly, to change it.
You can agree to change this
None of this is compulsory if you want it otherwise. The article opens with “unless there is an express stipulation to that effect,” so a creditor and debtor are free to contract for payment by installments, or to accept a partial payment on account, if that suits them. What the law refuses to do is impose partial payment on an unwilling creditor who never agreed to it — the stipulation has to actually exist, not be assumed from the debtor's convenience.
The one built-in exception
The article carves out a specific case: when a debt is “in part liquidated and in part unliquidated,” meaning part of it is fixed and certain while another part is still being determined. There, the creditor may demand, and the debtor may pay, the liquidated part without waiting for the rest to be worked out. That is not a general partial-payment right — it applies only where one part of the debt is already settled in amount and the other genuinely is not.
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.
- Camp John Hay Development Corporation, represented by Manuel T. Ubarra, Jr. vs. Office of, G.R. No. 225565, January 13, 2021 — read the decision on LawPhil →
- Consolidated Industrial Gases, Inc. vs. Alabang Medical Center, G.R. No. 181983, November 13, 2013 — read the decision on LawPhil →
- Selegna Management and Development Corporation, et al. vs. United Coconut Planters Bank, G.R. No. 165662, May 3, 2006 — read the decision on LawPhil →
- Food Terminal, Inc. vs. Hon. Reynaldo B. Daway, et al, G.R. No. 157353, December 9, 2004 — read the decision on LawPhil →