Short answer. Yes, if nothing at all was agreed about how long or for what. Article 1947 lets the lender demand the thing at will where neither the duration nor the use has been stipulated, or where the use is merely tolerated. That loose arrangement is called a precarium.
What the law says
The bailor may demand the thing at will, and the contractual relation is called a precarium, in the following cases: (1) If neither the duration of the contract nor the use to which the thing loaned should be devoted, has been stipulated; or (2) If the use of the thing is merely tolerated by the owner.
Civil Code, Article 1947 — Precarium. Read the full provision →
The open-ended loan has a name
Article 1947 covers exactly the situation most people are in when they lend something to a friend. Where neither the duration of the contract nor the use to which the thing loaned should be devoted, has been stipulated, the lender may demand the thing at will, and the relation is a precarium. No notice period is built into the article and no reason has to be given. The borrower's position is simply that he holds another person's property with permission, and permission that was never limited can be withdrawn.
Agreeing on a purpose changes the answer
The right to call the thing back at will belongs to the two cases the article lists, and both are cases of an arrangement with no shape to it. If you lent the pickup so your cousin could move house, or the laptop until his own came back from repair, then a use was stipulated even though no calendar date was. The loan then has a natural end, and the borrower is entitled to finish what he borrowed it for. So the practical question is not whether a date was set — it is whether anything at all was agreed about why.
Mere tolerance is the second door
The second case rarely involves a conversation at all. Someone occupies a room, parks on a lot, or uses equipment because the owner never objected. Article 1947 treats use that is merely tolerated by the owner as demandable at will, which matters most in family land disputes where a relative has stayed for years and now argues that long possession gave him a right. Tolerance is not a grant. But it does have to be tolerance rather than a sale or donation nobody documented, and that is usually the real fight.
Ending it cleanly
Because none of this was written down, the evidence is what was said and done — the messages arranging the loan, whether anything was ever paid for the use, whether the thing was ever asked for before. Make the demand in writing and give a date, so that a refusal after it is unmistakably a refusal. Note also that even a loan with a fixed term can be cut short: Article 1948 allows the lender to demand immediate return where the borrower commits an act of ingratitude, so even an agreed period does not assure undisturbed use.
Related provisions
- Civil Code, Article 1947 — Precarium
- Civil Code, Article 1948 — Return for Ingratitude
- Civil Code, Article 1933 — Loan: Commodatum and Mutuum