Quick background and if I'm in the wrong sub ill fuck off and find a different one. I am not a web developer. I am just the partner of a very frustrated man who was trying to help out. Family Business was being transferred from father to son. Dad died two weeks ago abruptly and its been a shit show trying to get everything in order. He was unorganized, stubborn about retirement and too trusting. among many things he was spending a fortune on a website manager/server host company, and doing whatever the website guy suggested. he was getting paid 2000 a month!!! With the transfer of the business it was decided to go with a different web guy. Well the old wed developer shut everything down in less than a working days notice, including access to all the emails, says he released and unlocked the domain and basically good luck idiots and a file of the compressed website via text and is no longer answering messages or calls. \- Was told the domain was unlocked and released. but it seems to be "locked in proxy on CloudFlare" and we can't transfer it, access it to unlock it, or authenticate it without logging in... which we can't get the info from him. \- Can't access our proof that we own the domain to unlock it without his help because he shut down our email access that his site server hosted (is that even the right terminology?) \- The emails is the biggest thing. How can I migrate them over to anything? Google is what the plan was. \- we have about a week to figure this out. he also said that domains expires december 1st. I work with books, this is so out of my element. I am learning a new language here with all the googling I am doing. He did this in less than 8 hours from a discussion of " hey this is out of our new budget can we talk about it" to " everything is shut down hope you figure it out" . no warning, no time to let us figure it out. nothing. is this normal operating procedure? How fucked are we? What do you yall suggest? I just want the domain and email access !