Short answer. No. Article 1424 says that once the right to sue on a civil obligation has lapsed by extinctive prescription, an obligor who voluntarily performs the contract cannot recover what he delivered or the value of the service rendered. Your free payment is treated as settling a debt the law still recognizes as real.
What the law says
the obligor who voluntarily performs the contract cannot recover what he has delivered or the value of the service he has rendered
Civil Code, Article 1424 — Performance After Prescription. Read the full provision →
Prescription bars the suit, not the debt itself
Extinctive prescription takes away the creditor's power to sue after too much time passes; it does not pretend the debt never existed. Article 1424 captures that distinction. It provides that once a right to sue upon a civil obligation has lapsed by extinctive prescription, the obligor who voluntarily performs cannot recover what he has delivered or the value of the service he has rendered. The debt survives as a natural obligation — one the courts will not enforce against you, but one they will respect if you choose to honor it. Paying it is your decision to make good on something the law still treats as morally and legally owed.
Why you cannot claw it back
The article is written from the obligee's side: it protects the recipient of a voluntary performance from being second-guessed later. The key word is voluntarily. If, knowing or not knowing the debt was already time-barred, you freely paid or rendered the service, the law reads that as recognition of the obligation, not as a payment made by mistake. That is why you cannot demand a refund and cannot recover the value of work you performed. The whole point of the rule is to keep a debtor who has settled up from unwinding a payment simply because a court could no longer have compelled it.
What the rule does not cover
Article 1424 does not revive the creditor's lost right to sue — it works only after you have already performed. It does not apply to a performance that was not voluntary, such as one obtained through force, intimidation or fraud; there the ordinary grounds for recovery may still be open. It also does not turn a debt that was fully paid on time into something further owed, nor does it let a creditor use it as a sword to demand payment you have not chosen to give. Its reach is narrow: it simply refuses a refund to an obligor who freely settled a prescribed debt.
The practical takeaway
Before paying an old debt, it is worth confirming whether the period to sue on it has genuinely lapsed, because once you perform voluntarily the money or service is gone as far as this article is concerned. If you believe your payment was not truly voluntary — for instance, because you were pressured or misinformed into it — that is a separate factual question that can change the outcome. But a clear-eyed, willing payment of a prescribed debt is exactly what Article 1424 says you cannot later recover.