The Revolution’s antifeudal legislation did not clearly determine if ground rents were feudal in nature and thus abolished. This ambiguity left room for disputes between property owners who possessed ground rents and those whose lands were subject to them. To complicate matters further, the financially strapped State had itself taken possession of millions of livres worth of ground rents when it nationalized the property of the Church and was sorely tempted to exploit this valuable resource. This article explores the triangular debate between the owners of ground rents, the debitors of those rents, and the State. Spanning the Directorial period and early years of the Consulate, the controversy flared a gain in 1810 when a wave of Napoleonic annexations in Europe reopened the question of how to abolish feudalism. The article highlights how opposing social groups defined by financial interest coalesced a round the political legal problem of defining what constituted legitimate property.