Short answer. Six ways: payment or performance, loss of the thing due, condonation or remission of the debt, confusion or merger of the rights of creditor and debtor, compensation, and novation. Annulment, rescission, the fulfilment of a resolutory condition and prescription also end obligations, under separate rules elsewhere in the Code.

What the law says

Obligations are extinguished: (1) By payment or performance; (2) By the loss of the thing due; (3) By the condonation or remission of the debt; (4) By the confusion or merger of the rights of creditor and debtor; (5) By compensation; (6) By novation.

Civil Code, Article 1231 — Modes of Extinguishing Obligations. Read the full provision →

The six modes, and what each actually covers

Article 1231 of the Civil Code lists them plainly: By payment or performance; By the loss of the thing due; By the condonation or remission of the debt; By the confusion or merger of the rights of creditor and debtor; By compensation; By novation. Payment covers doing what was promised, not only handing over money. Loss of the thing due releases the debtor only where the thing was determinate and the loss was not his doing. Condonation is forgiveness of the debt. Confusion is what happens when creditor and debtor become the same person — an heir who inherits from the person he owed. Compensation sets mutual debts off against each other, and novation replaces the old obligation with a new one.

Payment has to be complete before it counts

The most common mistake is treating partial payment as partial extinguishment of the obligation. Article 1233 provides that a debt is not understood to have been paid unless the thing or the service in which the obligation consists has been completely delivered or rendered. So an obligation survives until it is fully performed, and the creditor is generally not obliged to accept payment in instalments or in a different form from what was agreed. Acceptance of a partial payment reduces the balance owing; it does not turn an unfulfilled obligation into a fulfilled one, and it does not by itself waive the rest.

Compensation and novation are the ones people misapply

Compensation under Articles 1278 and 1279 is not simply a right to withhold payment because the other side owes you something too. Both parties must be principal creditor and principal debtor of each other, both debts must be due, liquidated and demandable, and neither may be subject to a pending third-party claim. Novation is stricter still: it must either be declared unequivocally, or the old and new obligations must be entirely incompatible, as Article 1291 and the provisions that follow it require. Amending a due date, adding security or accepting a partial settlement usually modifies an obligation without extinguishing it, which means the original terms continue to bind.

The causes governed elsewhere still end the obligation

Article 1231 closes by acknowledging other causes of extinguishment — annulment, rescission, fulfilment of a resolutory condition, and prescription — governed elsewhere in the Code. Prescription is the one worth checking early, because it runs whether or not anyone is paying attention to it, and the period depends on the kind of obligation and on whether it rests on a written instrument. If you are trying to establish that a debt is no longer owing, the practical route is documentary: the receipt or release, the deed of assignment, the written condonation, or the dated instrument from which the prescriptive period is counted.

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.

Related provisions

Note. Statute text quoted on this page is reproduced from the official enactment and is linked to the full provision. The explanation around it is general legal information from Vivas & Nobles Law Office, not legal advice. Whether it applies to your situation depends on facts only a lawyer reviewing them can assess.