Ask YC: Transfer ownership of a domain name?

I'd love to hear any advice on the best ways to transfer ownership of a domain name- A domain associated with our company is currently being used as a personal blog; We made an offer, and agreed on a price to buy it out, but I'd appreciate any advice on where to go from here. The easiest way I can think of to alter the ownership is to simply send them a check, then set up a quick GoDaddy (or similar) account just for the transfer.. We could tell them the password, and keep a copy ourselves. Once ownership is transferred to the transient account, we could then change the password and move it to own own accounts. This seems a bit kludgey, of course. There are a lot of steps where things can go wrong, and there's a lot of trust involved. I see that Network Solutions has a policy of getting notarized documents faxed back and forth, but we don't want to overwhelm the guy who runs it.. The chance of him abandoning the deal because of difficulty is greater than him abandoning it because of malice. Has anyone transferred a domain name before? Did you use a 3rd-party middle man? What were the pitfalls or pleasures of the journey?