Short answer. Six years. Article 1145 requires actions upon an oral contract, and actions upon a quasi-contract, to be commenced within six years. That is four years shorter than the ten allowed for a written contract, which is the practical cost of never putting the deal on paper.
What the law says
The following actions must be commenced within six years: (1) Upon an oral contract; (2) Upon a quasi-contract.
Civil Code, Article 1145 — Six-Year Actions. Read the full provision →
Six against ten, and why the gap bites
Article 1144 gives ten years for an action upon a written contract. Article 1145 gives six for an action upon an oral contract, and the same six upon a quasi-contract. So the handshake costs four years before anybody has argued about what was actually agreed. That matters most in the kind of arrangement people leave unwritten precisely because it is informal: money lent to a relative, work done for a friend, a share of a venture promised over a meal. Those are exactly the debts allowed to run for years before anyone counts.
When the six years start
They run from when the action could have been brought. Article 1150 provides that the time for prescription of all kinds of actions, where no special provision ordains otherwise, is counted from the day they may be brought. For a loan with no fixed date that turns on when repayment became demandable; for work done, on when payment fell due. Get that date wrong and every later calculation is wrong. Article 1151 supplies a special rule where the obligation is to pay principal with interest or an annuity: the period runs from the last payment of the interest or annuity.
The period can be interrupted
Article 1155 provides that the prescription of actions is interrupted when they are filed before the court, when there is a written extrajudicial demand by the creditor, and when there is any written acknowledgment of the debt by the debtor. That is worth knowing from both sides of an old oral debt. A demand letter you sent years ago may have preserved the claim, and a message in which the borrower promised to pay next month may have done the same for you. Search the correspondence before concluding that anything is dead.
The deadline is rarely the hardest part
Proving the agreement is, and the material for that is the conduct around it: transfers and deposit slips, messages discussing the amount or the terms, partial payments and how they were described at the time, and the people who were present. Write your own account of what was agreed and when, with dates, while you still remember it clearly. Then take that, together with the six-year calculation, to a lawyer, because the two questions have to be answered alongside each other.
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.
- Commissioner of Internal Revenue vs. San Miguel Corporation/San Miguel Corporation vs. Commissioner of Internal, G.R. No. 180740 / G.R. No. 180910, November 11, 2019 — read the decision on LawPhil →
- Maria L. Anido, et al. vs. Filomeno Negado, et al, G.R. No. 143990, October 17, 2001 — read the decision on LawPhil →
- Francisco L. Rosario, Jr. vs. Lellani De Guzman, Arleen De Guzman, et al, G.R. No. 191247, July 10, 2013 — read the decision on LawPhil →
- Pablo R. Antonio, Jr. vs. Engr. Emilio M. Morales etc, G.R. No. 165552, January 23, 2007 — read the decision on LawPhil →
Related provisions
- Civil Code, Article 1144 — Ten-Year Actions
- Civil Code, Article 1155 — The Three Ways to Interrupt Prescription