Short answer. No. Civil Code Article 1243 says a payment you make to your creditor after a court has judicially ordered you to retain the debt is not valid. Once that order reaches you, paying the original creditor anyway does not discharge what you owe, even if the payment itself is genuine.
What the law says
Payment made to the creditor by the debtor after the latter has been judicially ordered to retain the debt shall not be valid.
Civil Code, Article 1243 — Payment After Garnishment. Read the full provision →
A court order to retain overrides your ordinary duty to pay
Article 1243 is short and direct: “payment made to the creditor by the debtor after the latter has been judicially ordered to retain the debt shall not be valid.” Ordinarily you owe your creditor payment and paying discharges the debt. That changes the moment a court orders you, as debtor, to retain what you owe instead of handing it over — from that point, paying the creditor anyway does not count as valid payment under this article.
The pivotal fact is timing. The article invalidates payment made after the debtor has been judicially ordered to retain the debt, which leaves payments made before the order reached you untouched — those discharged the debt when they were made and are not undone by an order that came later. Keeping proof of the date you paid, and of the date the order was served on you, is what settles the question.
Why an invalid payment still leaves you exposed
Because the payment is not valid, it does not extinguish your obligation the way a normal payment would. If you pay your original creditor despite the retention order, you can still be required to pay again — this time to whoever the order was protecting, such as a party who garnished the debt to satisfy a separate claim against your creditor. Article 1243 puts the risk of ignoring the order squarely on the debtor who pays anyway.
This is what typically sits behind a garnishment
A judicial order to retain a debt is the mechanism behind garnishment: a creditor of your creditor goes to court to reach money your creditor is owed by you, and the court directs you to hold that money rather than release it to your creditor as usual. Article 1243 is what gives that order teeth — without it, a debtor could simply pay the original creditor and defeat the whole purpose of the garnishment.
What to do once you receive such an order
If you are notified that a court has ordered you to retain a debt you would otherwise owe, treat that order as controlling over your usual arrangement with your creditor, however routine or overdue that payment might feel. Paying the creditor regardless does not protect you — it exposes you to paying twice. Whatever the order directs you to do with the funds in the meantime is what determines whether your eventual payment will actually be valid.
It is equally important to know what does not trigger the article. It speaks of a debt the debtor has been judicially ordered to retain: a demand letter from a stranger claiming your creditor owes him is not a court order, and does not make an ordinary payment invalid. Nor does a valid order wipe out your obligation — the money is still owed, merely frozen until the court says where it goes.