Short answer. No. When a solidary debt becomes illegal before you pay it, paying it after that point gives you no right to reimbursement from your co-debtors. The Civil Code treats illegal and prescribed obligations the same way: voluntary payment after either event is entirely your own burden.
What the law says
Payment by a solidary debtor shall not entitle him to reimbursement from his co-debtors if such payment is made after the obligation has prescribed or become illegal.
Civil Code, Article 1218 — Payment After Prescription or Illegality. Read the full provision →
What Article 1218 provides
Article 1218 of the Civil Code is brief but clear: Payment by a solidary debtor shall not entitle him to reimbursement from his co-debtors if such payment is made after the obligation has prescribed or become illegal. Your co-debtors are not obliged to share in a payment you voluntarily made after the obligation had ceased to be legally enforceable. Whether it stopped being enforceable because time ran out (prescription) or because a new law made it illegal, the result is the same: you pay alone.
Why illegality ends the right to reimbursement
When a law makes an obligation illegal after it was originally entered into, the obligation can no longer be enforced in court. Once enforcement is impossible, there is no legal duty to pay it. A creditor who demanded payment after the obligation became illegal could be resisted. If you paid anyway — perhaps under pressure, perhaps without knowing the obligation had become illegal — you voluntarily satisfied something your co-debtors could have refused to pay. The law does not require them to share in a voluntary act that served no legally required purpose.
The same rule applies to prescribed obligations
Article 1218 covers two situations: obligations that have become illegal and obligations that have prescribed. Prescription means the time limit for bringing a legal action has expired. Once a debt is prescribed, a creditor who sues can be met with the defense of prescription and the case dismissed. Like an illegal obligation, a prescribed one is no longer legally enforceable. Paying it after prescription — even as a solidary debtor — does not give you a right to seek contribution from your co-debtors.
What you should have done
If you were a solidary debtor and the creditor demanded payment after the obligation had become illegal, the proper response was to raise the illegality as a defense. You were not required to pay. If you paid without invoking the defense — out of confusion, social pressure, or honest ignorance of the change in law — you cannot later shift the cost to your co-debtors. Before paying any solidary debt, especially one that is old or relates to an industry that has been regulated since the obligation was created, check whether the obligation is still legally enforceable.
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.
- Rosary Kristine I. Anido vs. Republic of the Philippines, G.R. No. 253527, October 21, 2024 — read the decision on LawPhil →
- Diamond Builders Conglomeration, et al. vs. Country Bankers Insurance Corp, G.R. No. 171820, December 13, 2007 — read the decision on LawPhil →
- Romeo C. Garcia vs. Dionisio V. Llamas, G.R. No. 154127, December 8, 2003 — read the decision on LawPhil →