Short answer. Yes. Article 2157 makes the responsibility of two or more payees solidary where there has been payment of what is not due. You may recover the entire amount from any one of them, leaving that payee to seek contribution from the others. You need not divide your claim or pursue each separately.
What the law says
The responsibility of two or more payees, when there has been payment of what is not due, is solidary.
Civil Code, Article 2157 — Solidary Liability of Payees. Read the full provision →
The payees are solidarily liable
When money that was not owed is paid to several people, the law does not leave the mistaken payer to unpick who got what. Article 2157 provides that the responsibility of two or more payees, when there has been payment of what is not due, is solidary. Solidary liability means each payee is answerable for the whole obligation to return, not merely for the slice he personally received. The payer therefore faces a group who are, as against him, collectively and individually responsible for the entire sum that must be given back.
What solidarity means for the payer
The practical effect is a real advantage to the person who paid by mistake. He may demand the whole amount from any one of the payees, without having to establish how the money was split among them or to sue each for his share. He is spared the burden of tracing exactly who received how much — often unknowable to him — and the risk that one payee is insolvent or has disappeared. He can simply proceed against a payee who is solvent and within reach for the entire sum, and that payee cannot insist on paying only a fraction.
The chosen payee's recourse
Solidarity settles the payer's position, not the final distribution of the loss among the payees. A payee who is made to return the whole amount is not left worse off than the others for good; he may seek contribution from his co-payees for their respective shares of what was received. That reckoning is a matter between the payees, to be worked out among themselves, and it does not concern or delay the payer. The article deliberately puts the trouble of sorting out shares on the recipients of the undue payment rather than on the person who mistakenly made it.
Why the law favours the mistaken payer
The rule fits the wider principle against unjust enrichment that underlies recovery of what is not due. The payees hold money that was never owed to them; as between innocent parties, the one who parted with the money by mistake is the more deserving of protection, and the ones enriched must give it up. Making their liability solidary maximises the payer's chance of actually getting the money back and minimises the obstacles put in his way. A payer in this position should identify a payee able to satisfy the whole claim and pursue that one, leaving the payees to their internal accounting.