The delivery date came and went. The apartment that was supposed to be finished by now is a concrete shell, or worse, a fenced lot with a faded rendering on the sign. You have wired payment after payment from abroad, on time, trusting the schedule in your contract. And now the emails go unanswered, the WhatsApp messages show one gray check, and the next installment is due in a week.
So you ask the obvious question. Why should I keep paying for something they are not building?
If your project has stalled and you are weighing whether to keep paying, we may have a page for it. See our guides for buyers at Sabana Equestrian and Wave Garden Punta Cana.
It is the right question. And Dominican law has an answer that is more on your side than you might expect, but with a condition that catches many buyers off guard. Understanding that condition is the difference between protecting yourself and handing the developer exactly the excuse it needs to keep your money. It is one piece of the larger picture of what to do when a developer doesn’t deliver.
Does Dominican Law Allow a Buyer to Suspend Payments?
Dominican law generally does allow a buyer to suspend payments when the developer has stopped performing. The principle carries an old Latin name, the exceptio non adimpleti contractus, the exception of the unfulfilled contract. Strip away the Latin and it says something any reasonable person already feels in their gut: in a two-sided bargain, you do not have to keep holding up your end while the other side ignores theirs.
A purchase agreement for an apartment is exactly that kind of two-sided bargain. You promised to pay. The developer promised to build and deliver. These promises are tied together, and under Articles 1183 and 1184 of the Civil Code, when one party stops performing, the other can suspend their own performance in response. You paying and them building are not two separate events. They are two halves of the same deal, and the law treats them that way.
So the instinct to stop paying when the building stops is not reckless. It rests on a real legal foundation. Dominican courts have applied this principle in favor of foreign buyers, and they have said, in plain terms, that it would be unreasonable to hold a partial shortfall in payment against a buyer when the developer has not finished construction on time and cannot even show it is in a position to deliver.
Read that again, because it matters: the courts have called it unreasonable to punish the buyer in that situation. That is the law leaning in your direction.
What Condition Must a Buyer Meet Before Suspending Payments?
The condition is proportionality. Dominican courts generally protect a buyer whose payments stayed in reasonable balance with the developer’s construction progress, and they do not protect a buyer who simply stopped paying. Here is where the story turns, and where the buyers who get hurt are the ones who stopped reading too soon.
The protection is not a blank check to stop paying. It is a balance. The courts do not ask only whether the developer fell behind. They ask whether your payments and the developer’s progress were in step with each other. They look at the whole picture, the conduct of both sides, and they measure one against the other.
Picture two buyers. The first paid sixty percent of the price, and the building is barely thirty percent complete. The developer is the one out of step, taking money far ahead of the work. If that buyer suspends the next payment, a court is likely to understand. The balance was broken by the developer.
The second buyer paid only twenty percent and is demanding a nearly finished building before releasing another cent. Here the imbalance runs the other way. That buyer is the one out of step, and if they stop paying, they may be the one in breach.
The law protects the buyer who kept their side of the bargain in reasonable proportion to what the developer delivered. It does not protect the buyer who simply stopped paying and hoped for the best. The same principle that shields one can expose the other. According to Caribbean Counsel’s analysis of more than 3,000 Dominican court decisions, a buyer who suspends payment while staying in reasonable proportion to the work completed is treated very differently from a buyer who stops paying without building any record.
This is why the honest answer to “can I stop paying” is not yes or no. It is: it depends on whether stopping keeps the deal in balance or throws it out of balance. And that is not a question you can safely answer by feel, from another country, without someone who can measure your position against the contract and the actual state of the work.
What the Courts Have Actually Done
This is not theory. Courts in La Altagracia, the province that covers Punta Cana and Bávaro, have decided these exact cases, and the pattern is consistent.
When a buyer kept their payments in reasonable balance and the developer missed the delivery date and then went silent for years, the courts have done three things at once. They rejected the developer’s attempt to cancel the contract and keep the money. They ordered the developer to deliver the apartment. And, in the same breath, they ordered the buyer to pay the balance that remained.
That last part surprises people, so sit with it. The buyer did not walk away with a free apartment. The court restored the balance: the developer must deliver, and the buyer must pay what is still owed. Suspension of payment is not erasure of the debt. It is a pause, a leverage, a protection, held until the other side performs. When the building is finally ordered delivered, the rest of the price comes due.
If what you want is the apartment, this is good news with a footnote. You can hold back payment to force performance, but be ready to complete the price when performance comes. If what you want is out, that is a different path entirely, the path of rescission, with its own rules, and one worth understanding before you choose.
Before You Stop Paying, Do This
If you are reaching for the decision to suspend payments, a few things protect you and a few things expose you.
Document the imbalance before you act. The strength of your position is the gap between what you paid and what they built. Photographs, the payment schedule, the construction status, the missed delivery date in the contract. This is the evidence that turns “I stopped paying” into “I lawfully suspended payment because they breached first.”
Put the developer formally on notice. A formal demand, delivered through the proper channel, is not a hostile act. It is the step that shifts the record in your favor and, as Dominican courts have stressed, it is often what separates a buyer who can later claim damages from one who cannot. Silence on your part can be read against you later.
Do not simply disappear into nonpayment. The buyer who stops paying without a word, without notice, without building the record, looks the same on paper as a buyer who could not afford the purchase. The developer will happily tell that story. Your job, with counsel, is to make sure the record tells the true one.
And decide what you actually want before you act, because the move to make is different depending on the answer. Suspending payment to force delivery is one strategy. Walking away to recover your money is another. Choosing the wrong one wastes time you may not have.
Can a Foreign Buyer Handle This Without Traveling to the Dominican Republic?
A foreign buyer can generally handle almost every part of this from home. A Dominican attorney can assess whether the buyer’s position is in balance or out of it, send the formal demand, build the evidentiary record, and bring the claim, all under a power of attorney, without the buyer crossing a border.
What you should not do is guess. The principle is on your side when the balance is on your side. Knowing which side of that line you stand on, before you stop paying, is the whole game.
If your developer has missed the delivery date and gone quiet, and you are wondering whether to keep paying, Caribbean Counsel can review your contract and your payment history and tell you honestly where you stand.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does a buyer have to notify the developer before suspending payments?
A buyer should generally send a formal demand first, known in Dominican practice as a puesta en mora. That notice creates a documented date on which the developer was placed in default. Without it, a court may read the buyer’s silence as ordinary nonpayment rather than a lawful response to the developer’s own breach of the contract.
Does suspending payment cancel what the buyer still owes?
No. Under Dominican law, suspension of payment is a pause rather than an erasure of the debt. Courts in La Altagracia have ordered developers to deliver the unit and, in the same decision, ordered the buyer to pay the balance still owed. A buyer who suspends payment should be ready to complete the price once delivery is ordered.
What evidence should a buyer gather before suspending payments?
A buyer should document the gap between what was paid and what was actually built. That generally means the contractual delivery date, the complete payment record, dated photographs of the construction site, and the written exchanges with the developer. This evidence is what turns a decision to stop paying into a documented suspension based on the developer’s prior breach.
Is suspending payment the same as cancelling the contract?
No. Suspending payment is a way to press the developer to perform while keeping the contract alive. Cancelling the contract, or rescission, is a separate path aimed at ending the deal and recovering the money already paid. A buyer should decide which outcome they actually want first, because the two strategies call for different steps.
What happens if a court finds the buyer stopped paying without justification?
A buyer who suspends payment while the imbalance runs against them may be treated as the party in breach. In that situation the developer can generally ask the court to cancel the contract and apply the penalty terms the contract provides. This is why the balance between payments made and construction completed matters before any payment is withheld.
This article is general legal information, not legal advice for any specific situation. Whether suspending payment is wise depends entirely on the facts of your contract and the state of construction. Caribbean Counsel was founded by an attorney trained at the Dominican Republic’s #1 ranked law firm (Legal 500 / Chambers Global).