I am a managing partner and I collected a sum owed both to me personally and to the firm, but only issued a receipt for my personal credit. How is the amount applied?

The receipt you issued does not control the outcome

You might expect that issuing a receipt for your personal credit means the whole payment belongs to you, but Article 1792 says otherwise for a managing partner. It provides that the sum collected "shall be applied to the two credits in proportion to their amounts, even though he may have given a receipt for his own credit only." Because you are the managing partner and the debtor owed both you and the firm, the law splits the payment proportionally regardless of what your receipt said.

How the pro-rata split actually works

The word proportion means the payment is divided based on the relative size of each demandable amount, not split evenly in half. If your personal credit was smaller than the partnership's credit, a proportionally smaller share of what you collected is treated as satisfying your own claim, and the larger remainder goes toward the partnership's claim against the same debtor. Both credits have to be equally demandable for this rule to apply.

The exception: crediting the partnership specifically

The rule changes if you had issued the receipt "for the account of the partnership credit" instead of your own — in that case the article says "the amount shall be fully applied to the latter," meaning the entire sum goes to the partnership's credit rather than being split. This exception exists because a managing partner is trusted to direct payment toward the firm when that is what the receipt actually states, and the law honors that explicit designation instead of forcing a pro-rata division.

Why the rule exists and what it means for you as manager

This rule exists to stop a managing partner from favoring his own personal claim over the partnership's claim when he happens to be the one collecting from a shared debtor. As manager, you have a position of trust over partnership affairs, and the law does not let you use that position to collect fully for yourself while leaving the firm's demand against the same debtor unsatisfied. Since your receipt for your personal credit only does not change the pro-rata result, you should still account to the partnership for its proportional share of what you collected.

Related provisions

• Civil Code, Article 1792 — Application of a Collected Sum
• Civil Code, Article 1252 — Application of Payments