Legal Principles of Rights: Acquisition, Loss, and Prescription

Posted on Sep 25, 2025 in Law & Jurisprudence

Acquisition of Subjective Rights

Acquisition of a right is when a person becomes its holder. It can be:

Original Acquisition

If not based on any previous law, one becomes an ex novo holder; the thing does not belong to anyone prior.

Derivative Acquisition

When the right is based on the loss of it by the previous owner. There are two types:

  1. Translational Acquisition

    This occurs when the buyer purchases the property derivatively because the seller is deprived of it; i.e., the same right is transferred from one subject to another.

  2. Constituent Acquisition

    This is when the constituent derivatively acquires usufruct rights because the owner, stripped of the right to enjoy the thing, grants a lesser right to the purchaser. This means a new, lesser right is constituted from a broader existing right and received by the purchaser. It can take place inter vivos (between living persons) or mortis causa (upon death).

The rule applies that no one can transfer to another what they do not possess, or transfer it in a manner different from how they hold it.

Transmission can be:

  • Universal: The transfer of an entire estate, as in the case of inheritance.
  • By Partial Title: Where the buyer acquires a specific thing and has no involvement with the transferor’s remaining relationships.

Loss of Subjective Rights

It involves the separation of a right from its current owner. This may be followed by another acquisition (derivative or original), such as when the owner abandons the thing and another person takes possession. Loss of rights may also result from an act of the holder, such as a forfeiture or sanction. Loss can also be caused by a natural event, affecting the estate of the subjective right holder.

Statute of Limitations

This is the mechanism determining the loss of subjective rights. It operates due to the inactivity of a proprietor maintained during the period specified by law, allowing the debtor to reject the creditor’s claim. The extinction of rights and actions of any kind affects all types of people, including legal entities.

This must be qualified, given that not all rights are subject to the statute of limitations; fundamental rights, for instance, are essential whether used or not.

Requirements for Statute of Limitations

  1. The loss of a right by prescription requires that it not be claimed.
  2. In the field of credit rights, inactivity must also be observed by the debtor. This means abstaining from any act of acknowledgment of debt, which, if it occurs, would interrupt the prescriptive period.
  3. The prescription must be claimed by the debtor; it does not apply automatically.
  4. The period prescribed by law must elapse without the right being exercised. This period is counted from the day the right could have been exercised. For positive real rights, prescription begins to run from when they cease to be used; for credit rights, it begins when they become due.

Interruption and Suspension of the Prescriptive Term

Interruption occurs through judicial action, extrajudicial claim by the creditor, or any act of debt acknowledgment by the debtor, which cancels the entire limitation period.

Interruption is different from suspension, which merely paralyzes the course of the prescriptive period, allowing it to resume later. Suspension typically applies in extraordinary cases.