Paragraph First: Annulment of Contract

Article 233

Article 233 - The annulment of a contract is always determined by an original vice contemporaneous with its birth (error, fraud, violence, duress, incapacity). It can only be pronounced by the court; it then operates retroactively, but the contract subsists and continues to produce its normal effects as long as it has not been judicially declared.

Article 234

Article 234 - The action for annulment is only open to those in favor of or protected by the person whose nullity is established by law, excluding particularly those who have dealt with said persons; it passes to the heirs of the title holder.

Article 235

Article 235 - This action is prescribed by a ten-year period, unless the law has fixed a different period for a particular case. This period runs from the day when the vice ceased to affect the act; for example, in cases of error and deceit, from the day they were discovered by the victim; in cases of violence, from the day it ceased; in cases of incapacity, from the day it entirely disappeared. When the act originated from an alienated person, the ten-year prescription does not begin to run until that person has knowledge of the contract previously concluded by them. The ten-year prescription is based on a tacit assumption of confirmation by the holder of the nullity action, who is considered to have renounced exercising it.

Article 236

Article 236 - Confirmation may take any other form, express or implied, and in that case it is no longer presumed but effective. Express confirmation is only effective to the extent that the confirmatory act states the substance of the contract, the defect from which it suffered, and the intention to abandon the action for nullity. Tacit confirmation is inferred from any circumstance or attitude implying on the part of the holder of this action a renunciation of this kind.

Article 237

Article 237 - Regardless of its form, whether presumed, express or tacit, confirmation effaces the vice affecting the act and no one can henceforth rely on it by any means, whether by way of exception or action. Confirmation implies waiver of all means that could be opposed to the act, but with reservation of rights that would have been acquired in favor of good faith third parties.