So I closed a very nice deal a week and change ago, very nice payout, wonderful. I split it with a broker who sent me the deal, wonderful.
This broker who sent me the deal was introduced to me by an ex-employee of mine. The ex-employee never had a written contract with me, and I told him that deals coming through this other pipeline, I would give 30% of my profits to him, I of course was assuming he'd work the deals.

Very soon after he introduced me, he ended up getting a job elsewhere, and in essence stopped working for me. I almost funded a deal with this other broker 6 months ago, and the other broker wanted to make sure that there were no "issues" with my employee, and I told him why I don't think there is anything owed, and, as a final nail in the coffin, I officially fired him. He really stopped working for me well over a year ago.

Now we funded this in a way that the employee might have a claim. So I wanted to hear from the CEOs here, from the employees here.....

This deal would never have happened had my ex-employee not introduced me to this other lead source.
Do I owe my ex-employee money?

(I'm posting this since we did not have a contract, so we're trying to figure out the industry standard for these things.)