After a storm or weather disaster strikes, you cope with the big problems first. Often, small details get ignored. But there’s a detail to include on the to-do list.

It’s important to put removal of your registration sticker on the list of priorities before you get rid of the vehicle.

It sounds like small thing. But if you leave the sticker on the windshield, you may face big headaches down the road.

Let’s say, your vehicle is cleaned-up and sold. The new owner sees the sticker and doesn’t bother to register the car under his name. He parks on the street. The tickets add up and the ticket officials come after, who? Not him.

His name isn’t on the registration. Time after time, they go for the person whose name is on the registration sticker and that person must prove that the car no longer belongs to them.

Scraping the sticker off of the windshield can prevent you from getting embroiled in another person’s drama. There’s no reason that after suffering storm damage, you should suffer collateral damage because the new car owner took advantage of the opportunity to use your registration sticker.

After Super Storm Sandy, we reported the following about storm damaged vehicles.

Sandy damaged more than 230,000 vehicles, and many are settling up with insurance companies. The National Insurance Crime Bureau says New Yorkers suffered the most damage with 130,000 vehicles and 60,000 claims were filed in New Jersey.

40,000 claims were filed in Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and West Virginia.

But invariably people forget one of the most important things before they let the vehicle go: take the registration sticker off of the windshield.  It’s an important step to protect yourself against the possibility of frauds involving the vehicle.