Short answer. No. The Civil Code answers this exact question: the indivisibility of a pledge or mortgage is not affected by the fact that the debtors are not solidarily liable. Your debt may be divided among you, but the mortgage securing it remains one whole, standing until the entire debt is satisfied.
What the law says
The indivisibility of a pledge or mortgage is not affected by the fact that the debtors are not solidarily liable.
Civil Code, Article 2090 — Indivisibility Unaffected by Non-Solidarity. Read the full provision →
What the law says
A pledge or mortgage is indivisible, even though the debt may be divided among the successors in interest of the debtor or of the creditor.
Civil Code, Article 2089 — Pledge and Mortgage Are Indivisible. Read the full provision →
Two different questions: the debt and the security
The confusion this question rests on is understandable, because joint liability really does divide the debt. When several debtors are bound jointly rather than solidarily, each owes only their proportionate share, and the creditor cannot demand the whole from any one of them. But the mortgage is a different thing from the debt it secures. The Civil Code states the rule for it directly: the indivisibility of a pledge or mortgage is not affected by the fact that the debtors are not solidarily liable. How liability for the loan is sliced among you does not slice the security.
What indivisibility means in practice
The companion provision explains the principle: a pledge or mortgage is indivisible, even though the debt may be divided among the successors in interest of the debtor or of the creditor. Concretely: a debtor's heir who has paid a part of the debt cannot ask for the proportionate extinguishment of the pledge or mortgage as long as the debt is not completely satisfied. Paying your share does not free your share of the property. The entire mortgaged property remains encumbered — answerable for the whole obligation — until the last peso of the secured debt is paid, no matter how many hands the debt has been divided among.
The cut runs the other way too
Indivisibility also binds the creditor's side. The creditor's heir who received his share of the debt cannot return the pledge or cancel the mortgage, to the prejudice of the other heirs who have not been paid. One of several creditors' successors cannot release the security piecemeal while others remain unpaid. The design protects everyone the security exists for: the encumbrance stays whole so that partial payments and partial releases cannot quietly dismantle it from either direction.
The one true exception, and what to do with it
The Code carves out a single situation: where several things are given in mortgage or pledge and each one of them guarantees only a determinate portion of the credit, the debtor may have each security extinguished as the portion it specifically answers for is satisfied. That allocation must exist in the contract — it is not implied from the debtors being several. So if you are co-borrowers hoping to free your properties one by one as each share is paid, the time to arrange that is when the mortgage is drafted, security by security and amount by amount. If your existing deed contains no such allocation, expect the mortgage to stand undivided until the whole loan is settled.
Related provisions
- Civil Code, Article 2090 — Indivisibility Unaffected by Non-Solidarity
- Civil Code, Article 2089 — Pledge and Mortgage Are Indivisible