Short answer. No. Under Article 685, any stipulation or testamentary provision that allows excavations causing danger to an adjacent land or building is void. The law will not give effect to a clause or a will that permits digging which threatens a neighbouring property, no matter how the permission is dressed up in a contract.
What the law says
Any stipulation or testamentary provision allowing excavations that cause danger to an adjacent land or building shall be void.
Civil Code, Article 685 — Void Stipulations On Excavations. Read the full provision →
A permission the law refuses to honour
Article 685 is short and absolute: Any stipulation or testamentary provision allowing excavations that cause danger to an adjacent land or building shall be void. It targets two kinds of documents — a stipulation, meaning a clause in a contract or agreement, and a testamentary provision, meaning a clause in a will. If either purports to permit excavations that endanger a neighbouring property, that permission has no legal effect at all. The safety of adjoining land and buildings is treated as a matter the parties cannot bargain away. So a signature on a paper that says the neighbour consents to dangerous digging does not make the danger lawful.
Why the law overrides private consent here
Ordinarily people are free to agree to many things affecting their own property. Article 685 marks a limit. Excavations that threaten to undermine, crack, or collapse an adjacent structure put safety — and often the safety of people, not just property — at stake. The law regards a stipulation permitting that as against public interest, and public interest cannot be waived by a private clause. This is why the provision voids the permission outright rather than merely making it revocable. The neighbour's apparent agreement is stripped of force precisely so that no one can point to it later to justify work that endangers the property next door.
What 'void' means for you
Because the permitting clause is void, it produces no rights and no defence. A party who carries out dangerous excavations cannot rely on the stipulation to escape responsibility, since in the eyes of the law the permission never existed. The neighbour who signed it is not bound by it and can still object to the hazardous work. If the excavation damages the adjacent land or building, the usual consequences for causing such harm follow, and the void clause offers the excavator no shelter. In short, the paper cannot convert dangerous digging into authorised conduct, and cannot be used to shift away the liability the danger creates.
The line between dangerous and merely permitted work
Article 685 does not forbid all excavation near a boundary. Neighbours can and do carry out lawful works, and can make valid agreements about ordinary construction. What the article strikes down is permission for excavations that cause danger to the adjacent land or building — the qualifier is the source of harm, not the mere act of digging. Related rules of the Code require those who excavate to observe proper distances and precautions and to protect neighbouring property. So the safe path is not to rely on a consent clause at all, but to ensure the work itself is done safely; a stipulation cannot legalise danger the law refuses to permit.