At least since 1916, the discharge is a typical institute of Brazilian Private Law. However, it is certain that, long before that, discharge was already a relevant and socially typical instrument, continuously present in business traffic. Despite its practical importance, the discharge institute lacks specific monographic works about it. And it is costly to the Brazilian courts that there is no study dedicated to systematizing the institute and establishing interpretative parameters for situations in which the scope of the effectiveness of the discharge is a controversial topic. For example, in the Second Section of the Brazilian Superior Court of Justice – a hierarchically high part within the national Court that has the exact function of standardizing the jurisprudence – there are conflicting understandings on the interpretation of the discharge that create insecurity and uncertainty for the person subject to its jurisdiction related to the criteria to be analyzed by the interpreter in order to authorize or not the judicial onslaught to see a previously settled obligation complemented. In this scenario, with the objective of, to some extent, filling this doctrinal gap, this work will analyze the institute of discharge in a systematized way in light of the Brazilian law system, address its functional profile, examine precedents of the Superior Court of Justice representing serious divergence and seek to offer interpretative parameters for certain impasses regarding the scope of the discharge.