Short answer. Yes, but only after the fact. Civil Code Article 1112 lets a person with capacity to alienate property renounce prescription already obtained. What cannot be given up in advance is the right to prescribe in the future — a renunciation only works once the prescriptive period has actually run its course.
What the law says
Persons with capacity to alienate property may renounce prescription already obtained, but not the right to prescribe in the future.
Civil Code, Article 1112 — Renouncing Prescription. Read the full provision →
Already obtained, not in advance
Article 1112 draws a clear line in time. A person “with capacity to alienate property may renounce prescription already obtained,” meaning the ownership or right has already vested through the passage of the required period. What the same sentence forbids is renouncing “the right to prescribe in the future” — you cannot sign away, ahead of time, your ability to ever acquire something by prescription. Only a prescription that has already happened can be given up.
You need capacity to alienate property
The renunciation is treated as a form of disposing of property, so the law requires the same capacity that alienating property in general requires. A person without that capacity — someone under a legal restriction on disposing of their own assets — cannot validly renounce a prescription they have already obtained, even if they want to. The requirement exists because giving up a completed prescriptive right has the same practical effect as giving away the property itself.
You can also renounce it without saying so
Article 1112 recognizes an implied route as well: “prescription is deemed to have been tacitly renounced when the renunciation results from acts which imply the abandonment of the right acquired.” Conduct inconsistent with claiming the right — recognizing the original owner's title again, for instance, or otherwise acting as though the prescriptive gain never happened — can amount to renunciation even without a formal declaration to that effect.
Why the law forbids renouncing it in advance
Prescription exists in part to bring certainty to long-unchallenged possession and to discourage stale claims. If people could waive their future right to prescribe ahead of time, others could routinely extract that waiver as a condition of some other arrangement, hollowing out the protection prescription is meant to offer. By allowing renunciation only after the right is obtained, the law keeps the benefit of prescription intact until the person who actually holds it chooses, freely, to let it go. Article 1114 limits how far a renunciation reaches: creditors and other persons interested in enforcing the prescription may still invoke it despite the debtor's or owner's renunciation, so giving up the completed prescriptive right does not by itself defeat a third party's separate stake in that outcome.
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.
- Hydro Resources Contractors Corporation vs. National Irrigation Administration, G.R. No. 160215, November 10, 2004 — read the decision on LawPhil →