One of our first client also had the same problem.

The earlier company which designed the site as well as hosted it didn’t wanted to transfer the domain name as well as hosting details to the clients. Fortunately the client wasn’t doing much business though the site and we purchased another domain name.

Later on the earlier company didn’t renewed the domain and I have told the client to purchase it again if he still wants to use it. For the time being I am purchasing the domain name on client’s behalf as they don’t have much idea about internet but later on we may let them do it themselve to avoid any such possibility down the road.

This is a Comment on Who Owns Your Website Design, Code, Domain, Blog and Traffic Analytics Data? by Alok.