Legal Question in Real Estate Law in Florida

A prospective buyer gave her realtor $1000 as earnest money on a condo that I had available for sale in South Florida. After the lawful amount of time to proceed with the sale had elapsed, and the buyer refused to complete the sale, the buyer's realtor got the necessary signatures of both the buyer and seller (me) on the authorization to release the earnest money from escrow. I received a check for $500, and the buyer�s agent kept the other $500. (Whether he returned any of that $500 to the prospective buyer or not, I don�t know.) As to the $500 that I received, my real estate agent has told me that I'm supposed to split that money with him. In other words, my real estate agent, (the fellow that listed my condo for sale on the MLS) wants a check from me for $250 to keep for himself. I can't find anything in my listing contract with him that says anything about this issue. Is there a Florida real estate law that states what the default practice is about the seller needing to apportion the seller's portion of the forfeited earnest money to the seller's listing agent? And if there is no specific law about it, what is the generally accepted tradition about this in Florida? I'm thinking that the same percentage that's used in calculating how much of the selling price goes to the seller's agent, should be the percentage used in calculating the apportioning of the forfeited earnest money. If the selling price of the condo is say, $70,000, and the contract says that the seller's agent gets, say, 3% of the selling price, why should the seller�s agent�s percentage leap to 50% for forfeited earnest money?

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