Are you working with a Realtor? If so, on the one to four residential resale contract at the bottom of pg 1, it will say earnest money in the amount of... will be deposited at... title company. The Earnest money is to be sent to the title company in a reasonable amount of time... norm 48 hours after execution.
On PG 7 paragraph 23, the Termination option fee will be the $ amount... to terminate the contract for any reason within... days. (This allows the buyer time to get inspections) This protects the buyers Earnest money from time of execution to however many days listed in the paragraph. This check should be submitted to the Seller and receipted along with the Earnest Money on PG 8.
If they defaulted on the third party financing addendum... which is an addendum to the one to four resale contract... and you close and fund, you are still entitled to keep the option and earnest money. Hope this helps. http://www.RussellThomae.com
