How to access a Domain where the owner is deceased

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Here’s my dilemma, I have a client where we created a website for him. We are now trying to point his domain to this new website which is hosted by Cloudflare. However, the domain was created way back in 2003 by his old IT guy who passed away. So how do you get access to a domain where the IT guy on file as the owner has passed away?

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There are exceptions, but generally Cloudflare is not a hosting provider. There may be another party involved in the actual hosting of the site.

Was that done using cloudflare pages?

You’ll need the assistance of the Support team, they have a process they follow when this occurs. Can you create a ticket using the account you are using here, share as much details as you can, things like domain name, email of the deceased individual, and any other emails associated with the account.

You can open an Account ticket here, https://dash.cloudflare.com/?to=/:account/support. Once you have a ticket number, please share that number here for us to flag it for the Support team.

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Cloonan - Thanks for the info. No, the website was not created using Cloudflare but I will take your advice and put in a ticket.

Thanks so much

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Okay, can’t implement a ticket request. My account is not set up for this. Keep in mind that we use a different host and simply created an account for client purposes. With this said, the nameserver for this domain - docduben.com is housed in Cloudflare.
Name Server: chan.ns.cloudflare.com
Name Server: doug.ns.cloudflare.com

We simply need to point this to a different server, but as stated before, we don’t have access to the domain due to our client’s IT guy passing away.

Any further suggestions would be most appreciated.

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Sorry for that, I created 3307265 on your behalf. You will have received a copy via email. Can you respond to that with the address of the account holder along with whatever other details you like?

I’ll flag that ticket 3307265 and this topic for my colleagues in Support.

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If you or your client control the relationship with the domain registrar, which is tucowsdomains.com, you can add the domain to the account you are using here and change the nameservers at the registrar.

You’ll lose access to the records and configuration in cloudflare by adding it to a new account. But if at the moment the domain is in the account of a deceased vendor, those records are basically lost already.

It is not. We simply sit between the hosting provider and visitors to the site. There is another party involved. That is where the old website files exist. If you have a new site, you can seek new hosting and move on. Add the site to a cloudflare account you can control, change nameservers at the registrar, set up the site at a hosting provider, and point to that site in your cloudflare dash.

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To expand on what @cloonan shared about the identity of the domain registrar, Tucows is a wholesale registrar that operates via resellers. The domain in question was registered through Pixelgate. The following contact information was provided by the Tucows whois server. They should be able to assist with anything related to the domain registration.

Registration Service Provider:
    Pixelgate, [email protected]
    805-446-6254
    805-446-6253 (fax)
    http://www.pixelgate.net
    This company may be contacted for domain login/passwords,
    DNS/Nameserver changes, and general domain support questions.
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Thanks epic.network, this is the company the IT guy that passed away ran. We even tried contacting the number on file and simply get pushed to voicemail. Have contacted everyone on the information received by looking it up through the who’s domain and have still had no luck. The mystery continues.

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