Short answer. No. Legal compensation under Article 1279 of the Civil Code requires that each person be, at the same time, a principal debtor and a principal creditor of the other. A debt your creditor owes to your spouse is owed to a different person, so the two debts do not cancel out.
What the law says
That each one of the obligors be bound principally, and that he be at the same time a principal creditor of the other
Civil Code, Article 1279 — Requisites of Legal Compensation. Read the full provision →
Compensation needs the same two people on both debts
Legal compensation is the law's way of letting two debts wipe each other out so neither person has to pay the other. But it only works when the parties are mutually bound. The first requisite in Article 1279 is that each one of the obligors be bound principally, and that he be at the same time a principal creditor of the other. In plain terms, the very same two persons must owe each other. You owe your creditor; for the debts to cancel, he must owe you. A debt he owes to your spouse is a debt to someone else, and it cannot be set off against what you personally owe him, however close the family relationship.
Why a spouse's separate credit does not count
Your spouse is a distinct person in the eyes of the law of obligations, with their own claims to collect and their own name on the debt. The creditor's obligation runs to your spouse, not to you, so you are not his creditor at all on that account. Allowing you to seize your spouse's credit to reduce your personal debt would let one person's obligation be paid with another person's asset, which the mutuality rule exists to prevent. Whether the credit forms part of your marital property is a separate matter of property relations; it does not, on its own, make you the creditor Article 1279 requires you to be.
The routes that can make it work
There are lawful ways to reach a similar result, but they change who the parties are. If your spouse assigns or transfers their credit to you, you would then hold the claim in your own name and the mutuality requirement could be met. Alternatively, all three of you may simply agree to a set-off, because parties are free to arrange conventional compensation by contract even where the strict legal requisites are absent. What you cannot do is unilaterally treat your spouse's separate credit as your own and refuse to pay on that basis. Absent an assignment or an agreement, the creditor is entitled to be paid what you owe him.
The other requisites still have to line up
Even where mutuality exists, compensation is not automatic. Article 1279 also requires that both debts be due, liquidated and demandable, that they consist of money or of consumable things of the same kind and quality, and that neither be the subject of a retention or controversy commenced by a third person. So solving the "wrong person" problem is only the first step; the remaining conditions must be checked before the debts can be treated as extinguished. If any one of them is missing, the offset fails and each obligation stands to be paid on its own terms.
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.
- Banco De Oro Unibank, Inc. vs. Edgardo C. Ypil, Sr., et al, G.R. No. 212024, October 12, 2020 — read the decision on LawPhil →
- Union Bank of the Philippines vs. Development Bank of the Philippines, G.R. No. 191555, January 20, 2014 — read the decision on LawPhil →
- Philippine National Bank vs. Court of Appeals, et al, G.R. No. 108052, July 24, 1996 — read the decision on LawPhil →
- United Planters Sugar Milling Co., Inc. vs. The Hon. Court of Appeals, et al, G.R. No. 126890, July 11, 2007 — read the decision on LawPhil →