La excepción de contrato no cumplido y su consagración en el código civil chileno

The majority of national doctrine considers exceptio non adimpleti contractus to be expressly established in article 1552 of our civil code. This essay will demonstrate that, for historical reasons, the aforementioned norm was only implicitly added. We argue that article 1552, based on the Louisiana Civil Code, actually establishes the model of default compensation, which differs from the institution of exceptio non adimpleti contractus, even though both are founded on the principle of simultaneity for fulfi llment of obligations. Our Civil Code only implicitly contains exceptio non adimpleti contractus. To clarify this point is of utmost importance in order to determine its incidence in the diverse effects stemming from breach of contract.