Short answer. Yes. Article 1186 provides that the condition shall be deemed fulfilled when the obligor voluntarily prevents its fulfilment. If the party who owes you payment is the one stopping the trigger from occurring, the law treats the trigger as having occurred and the obligation becomes demandable.

What the law says

The condition shall be deemed fulfilled when the obligor voluntarily prevents its fulfillment.

Civil Code, Article 1186 — Constructive Fulfillment. Read the full provision →

Constructive fulfilment

Article 1186 is a single line: The condition shall be deemed fulfilled when the obligor voluntarily prevents its fulfillment. It closes the obvious loophole in conditional obligations. If a debtor could escape by making the condition impossible, every conditional promise would be worth only as much as the debtor's good faith. Two elements have to be shown: the obligor's act, and that it was voluntary — a deliberate act of his own, not misfortune, not a third party's refusal, and not a change in circumstances he neither caused nor controlled.

What counts as preventing

The article does not require bad motive to be confessed, only that the obligor's own conduct caused the failure. Withholding a document, signature or access that only he could give; refusing to process an application he undertook to file; instructing staff not to accept your submission; cancelling the very inspection the payment depended on. What it does not cover is a condition that failed for its own reasons — a permit refused on the merits, a buyer who walked away, a market that moved. If the obligor merely failed to help, ask what the contract obliged him to do. Article 1159 requires contracts to be complied with in good faith, and a duty to cooperate is often implied in the condition itself.

What follows once it is deemed fulfilled

The consequence is that the obligation becomes demandable as if the condition had happened. Article 1187 adds that the effects of a conditional obligation to give retroact to the day the obligation was constituted, so you are not merely paid from the date of a court's finding. If the other side still refuses, Article 1191 lets the injured party in a reciprocal obligation choose between fulfilment and rescission, with damages either way. And Article 1188 is worth remembering while the dispute is live: a creditor may, before the fulfilment of the condition, bring the appropriate actions for the preservation of his right.

Build the record now

This is a case you win on documents. Write to the obligor asking, specifically, for the act you say he is withholding, and give a date. His refusal, or his silence, is the evidence. Keep every version of the request, note who he told to stop, and preserve the sequence — obstruction usually shows up as a change in behaviour timed to the moment the condition came within reach. Then check the contract for what he undertook to do toward the condition, because the strongest version of this claim is not merely that he blocked it, but that he was obliged to advance it.

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.

Related provisions

Note. Statute text quoted on this page is reproduced from the official enactment and is linked to the full provision. The explanation around it is general legal information from Vivas & Nobles Law Office, not legal advice. Whether it applies to your situation depends on facts only a lawyer reviewing them can assess.