Short answer. Yes. Article 1108 confirms that prescription runs even against minors and incapacitated persons who have guardians, but it also gives you a right to claim damages from your legal representative if that person's negligence caused the prescription. Your guardian's negligence does not go unanswered.
What the law says
Minors and other incapacitated persons who have parents, guardians or other legal representatives
Civil Code, Article 1108 — Against Whom Prescription Runs. Read the full provision →
What the law says
Persons who are disqualified from administering their property have a right to claim damages from their legal representatives whose negligence has been the cause of prescription.
Civil Code, Article 1108 — Against Whom Prescription Runs. Read the full provision →
Prescription runs against you even though you have a guardian
Article 1108 lists the categories of people against whom prescription, whether acquisitive or extinctive, continues to run, and it names "minors and other incapacitated persons who have parents, guardians or other legal representatives" as the first category. Having a guardian does not pause the clock on prescription. This is precisely why your claim was able to prescribe in the first place — the law does not treat a represented person as automatically protected from the passage of time.
But the law gives you a remedy against the negligent representative
Because prescription runs regardless of your incapacity, the article balances that rule with direct protection against a representative who fails in their duty. It states plainly that "persons who are disqualified from administering their property have a right to claim damages from their legal representatives whose negligence has been the cause of prescription." Your guardian's job includes protecting your rights and interests, including acting in time to prevent claims from prescribing, and a failure to do so can make the guardian personally answerable to you.
What you would need to establish
To hold your guardian liable under this article, you would generally need to show that the guardian's negligence — rather than some unavoidable circumstance — was actually the cause of the claim prescribing. This means demonstrating that the guardian had the opportunity and duty to act to preserve the claim within the prescriptive period and simply failed to do so, rather than the claim being lost due to factors genuinely outside the guardian's control.
The measure of what you can recover
The remedy the article grants is a claim for damages, meant to compensate you for the loss caused by the prescription of your original claim, rather than a mechanism to revive the prescribed claim itself against the original debtor. In practical terms, this generally means seeking to recover from your guardian the value of what you lost when the underlying claim became unenforceable, since the guardian's negligence is what deprived you of the chance to pursue it while it was still available.
Cases citing this provision
These Supreme Court decisions cite the provision above. We list them so you can read them yourself; the summaries of what each decided are not ours to give.
- Bartola M. Vda De Tirona, et al. vs. Cirilo Encarnacion, G.R. No. 168902, September 28, 2007 — read the decision on LawPhil →
- Sheriff Albert A. Dela Cruz of the Sandiganbayan Security and Sheriff Services, the Sandiganbayan Security and Sheriff Services vs. Wellex Group, Inc, G.R. No. 247439, August 23, 2023 — read the decision on LawPhil →
- Heirs of Mario Malabanan vs. Republic of the Philippines, G.R. No. 179987, April 29, 2009 — read the decision on LawPhil →
- Republic of the Philippine, et al. vs. Heirs of Agustin L. Angeles, et al, G.R. No. 141296, October 7, 2002 — read the decision on LawPhil →