Short answer. No. The right to receive support is intransmissible: it exists to meet the personal needs of the specific person entitled to it, so it cannot be sold, assigned, or used to pay your own debts. Article 1347 lets only transmissible rights become the object of a contract, and support is excluded from that category.
What the law says
All rights which are not intransmissible may also be the object of contracts.
Civil Code, Article 1347 — Object of Contracts. Read the full provision →
The rule behind 'intransmissible rights'
Article 1347 opens the object of a contract to almost anything of value, including things, future things, and services, but draws a line at rights the law considers too personal to transfer. If a right is intransmissible, no contract, however willing both sides are, can move it from one person to another.
The idea is that some rights are given to a person because of who they are and what they need, not because they represent a piece of transferable wealth, so no signature can turn them into ordinary property.
Why support falls on the wrong side of that line
Support is meant to keep a specific person fed, housed, educated, and medically cared for. Because it answers a personal need rather than functioning as ordinary property, the law treats it as attached to the person entitled to receive it.
Selling or signing it away would defeat the very purpose the obligation exists to serve, and would leave the person needing it without recourse against the relative who owes it, since the buyer of that right would have no personal need the law is protecting.
Other rights that share this restriction
The same intransmissible character applies to purely personal rights such as the right to hold a public office, parental authority, and the right to vote. These sit alongside support as rights the holder cannot bargain away.
That is different from ordinary transmissible rights, such as a debt owed to you or a right to collect rent, which can be sold or assigned freely because they represent property rather than a personal status or need.
What a support recipient can do instead
A person owed support cannot sign that entitlement over to a creditor or a third party, and a court will not enforce an agreement that tries to do so. But money already paid to them, once actually received, becomes their own property and can then be used, saved, or disposed of like any other asset.
The intransmissible right is the claim to future support, not the cash already handed over in satisfaction of it.
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.
- Atty. Pedro M. Ferrer vs. Spouses Alfredo Diaz, et al, G.R. No. 165300, April 23, 2010 — read the decision on LawPhil →
- Belinda Tañedo, et al. vs. the Court of Appeals, et al, G.R. No. 104482, January 22, 1996 — read the decision on LawPhil →
- Evangeline Engao Asis, Heirs of Felicitation Engao-Bautista, Namely: Fernando B. Bautista, Agueda Fe B, G.R. No. 242127, September 15, 2021 — read the decision on LawPhil →
- Heirs of Zosimo Q. Maravilla vs. Privaldo Tupas, G.R. No. 192132, September 14, 2016 — read the decision on LawPhil →
Related provisions
- Civil Code, Article 1347 — Object of Contracts
- Civil Code, Article 1348 — Impossible Things or Services