Short answer. No. Article 1425 says that when a third person, without your knowledge or against your will, pays a debt you were no longer legally bound to pay because the action had prescribed, and you later voluntarily reimburse him, you cannot recover what you paid. Your voluntary reimbursement of a natural obligation cannot be taken back.
What the law says
When without the knowledge or against the will of the debtor, a third person pays a debt which the obligor is not legally bound to pay because the action thereon has prescribed, but the debtor later voluntarily reimburses the third person, the obligor cannot recover what he has paid.
Civil Code, Article 1425 — Third-Person Payment of a Prescribed Debt. Read the full provision →
Why you cannot get it back
Article 1425 addresses a very specific chain of events, and it matches yours closely. It provides that when without the knowledge or against the will of the debtor, a third person pays a debt which the obligor is not legally bound to pay because the action thereon has prescribed, but the debtor later voluntarily reimburses the third person, the obligor cannot recover what he has paid. Once you voluntarily reimbursed the third person, the door to recovery closed. The law treats your reimbursement as the free settlement of a debt that morality, if not the courts, still recognised as yours — and it will not let you undo it.
The role of prescription
The reason the debt could not be enforced against you is prescription. When the period to sue on a debt lapses, the creditor loses the right of action — he can no longer compel payment through the courts. But prescription does not erase the underlying moral duty to pay what you once owed. That duty survives as a natural obligation. So although no one could have made you pay, the debt in a moral sense remained. That is why paying it, or reimbursing someone who paid it for you, is treated as fulfilling a real obligation rather than giving away money for nothing.
Why 'voluntary' is the key word
Everything turns on the word voluntarily. The article protects the retention only where your reimbursement was free and willing. Because you chose to reimburse the third person, knowing or accepting that the debt was already prescribed, the law respects that choice as a genuine act of fulfilment. Had the reimbursement been extracted by force, fraud, or a real mistake about the facts, the analysis would differ — those defects strike at the voluntariness the article requires. But an informed, willing reimbursement is exactly what the provision refuses to let you claw back.
What this rule does not cover
This provision does not revive the creditor's right to sue you, and it does not say the third person could have forced you to reimburse him — he could not, since the debt was unenforceable. It simply governs the consequence once you did reimburse voluntarily: no recovery. Nor does it apply where you never actually reimbursed, or where your payment was not voluntary. And it does not turn every prescribed debt into something you must pay — the choice was always yours. What the law will not allow is for you to make that choice, carry it out, and then demand your money back.