No one has to accept part payment or a different thing

It is Section Two of Chapter I of Title II of Book Four of the Civil Code of 2020, Articles 1117 to 1119. It fixes what a payment must satisfy to extinguish the obligation: that it be complete, that it be what is owed, and that it not be imposed in pieces.

Any creditor or debtor of an outstanding obligation. The indivisibility rule yields where the contract or the law expressly authorize partial payment.

• Executing or delivering the performance owed in full: only then is payment understood made and the obligation extinguished.Verified against the official source
• Delivering the thing owed and not another, even if the other is of equal or greater value.Verified against the official source
• To impose a partial payment, that the contract or the law expressly authorize it.Verified against the official source

• The document of the obligation, because what exactly is owed and whether partial payment is authorized follow from it.
• The liquidation of the debt where it has a liquidated and an unliquidated part, because Article 1119 allows collecting the first without waiting for the second.

1. 1

   Step 1: When the obligation is really extinguished

   Article 1117 hangs it on one word: payment is understood made and the obligation extinguished when the performance owed has been executed or delivered in full to the creditor. While anything is missing, the obligation stays alive, however much has been paid.

2. 2

   Step 2: What is owed cannot be swapped

   Article 1118 is categorical: the debtor of a thing cannot compel the creditor to receive a different one, even if of equal or greater value than the one owed. Not even by improving the deal: the creditor asked for what they asked for.

3. 3

   Step 3: Nor one service for another

   The second paragraph of the same article extends it: in obligations to do, neither may one act be substituted for another against the creditor’s will. With their will, yes; against it, no.

4. 4

   Step 4: The creditor does not have to accept instalments

   Article 1119 says it plainly: the creditor cannot be compelled to receive partially the performances the obligation consists of. With a proviso that must be read whole: except where the contract or the law expressly authorize it. If your contract provides for instalments, that is the express authorization.

5. 5

   Step 5: The liquidated-part exception

   The same article opens a concrete door: if the debt has a liquidated part and an unliquidated part, the creditor may demand, and the debtor may make, payment of the first, without waiting for the second to be liquidated. It serves both sides: the creditor collects what is already clear and the debtor stops owing it.

6. 6

   Step 6: What to do if the creditor will not receive

   These three articles protect the creditor; they do not require them to cooperate. Where it is the creditor who unreasonably refuses to accept payment, the figure is not here but in the next chapter of the Code — the substitutes for payment, consignment foremost — which this guide does not cover.

These are rules between creditor and debtor; where there is disagreement over whether payment was complete or was what was owed, the Court of First Instance decides. The Code names no agency and no counter here.

• Treating the obligation as extinguished on an almost complete payment: the performance owed must be delivered in full.
• Offering something better and assuming the creditor must take it: they cannot be compelled, even at greater value.
• Substituting one service for another against the creditor’s will.
• Imposing instalments where neither the contract nor the law expressly authorizes them.
• Reading Article 1119 without its proviso: a contract providing for instalments does authorize partial payment.
• Withholding the whole debt because part is unliquidated: the liquidated part can be demanded and paid separately.
• Confusing the indivisibility of payment with an indivisible obligation: different articles, different problems.
• Using these articles against a creditor who refuses to receive: consignment, in the next chapter, is for that.

These are the government pages this guide is based on.

• Poder Judicial de Puerto Rico

  Poder Judicial

  bvirtualogp.pr.gov