A SPECIAL FILM SCREENING

Thank you so much to everyone who came out a few weeks ago to help us celebrate a huge milestone: our tenth anniversary. We loved hosting you all, alongside our partners the LA Jewish Film Festival and The Consulate General of France Los Angeles."Once Upon My Mother" proved to be an incredible story of a mother who did everything to ensure that her son would have the best life possible, in spite of his disability -- and it just won the Audience Award for Best Drama in the whole festival!

Our panel of fierce moms was the perfect nightcap for this film. Thank you so much to Elaine Hall (founder of The Miracle Project), Judy Mark (president of Disability Voiced United), and Rabbi Naomi Levy (author and Rabbi/founder of Nashuva) for joining us after the film to share their stories. It really illuminated how each family's path can be very different, but there are some core shared experiences.

And thank you to everyone for supporting JLA Trust as we've grown these last ten years. We're proud of the work we've done in our community so far... here's to ten more wonderful years!

UPCOMING WEBINAR

Spotlight On: Insurance and Estate Planning
Wednesday, June 10, 2026, 3:30 - 5 PM


We’re excited to welcome Jennifer Joseph, Financial Advisor and Insurance Agent with New York Life Insurance, tomorrow for a webinar focused on helping families plan for the future with confidence.


Jennifer will guide us through how different types of insurance (Including life insurance, disability insurance, health insurance/Medicare, and property & casualty insurance) can play an important role in estate planning. She’ll also share helpful information on getting started with an estate plan and planning ahead for your family’s long-term needs.

UPDATES

• We spent last week learning and connecting with other California Fiduciaries at the PFAC conference... we work hard to stay on top of our field and make sure we're providing all of our clients with the best possible fiduciary expertise!

• A little-known SECURE Act exception allows qualifying disabled beneficiaries to continue using life-expectancy distributions from inherited IRAs. With proper planning, this exception can preserve long-term tax benefits and enhance wealth transfer across generations. Read the full article.

CLIENT FEATURE

Leighton "Lee" Passehl found his passion for radio-controlled car racing when he was 11 years old. The year he found racing, he didn't even want to go out for Halloween: it was a distraction.

Now 41, Lee is nationally-ranked and has received sponsorships. He recently came 3rd in a big race in Bakersfield. Lee has Autism and he's high-functioning. He has his own apartment. He's spent most of his adult life working part-time. He struggles with communication, but he's still learned how to build relationships. In a lot of ways, he's a huge success story. But what's absent in that brief rundown is just how much good parenting it took to get him here.

When Lee was born in the mid-80s, even doctors had huge misconceptions about autism. His parents had to learn his sensitivities, his allergies, what he responded to behaviorally. Both parents changed their careers so they had the time and space to support him when the school called. They chose to retire in California because it brought him closer to his radio-controlled car racing community. His father, Don, spends a lot of his time helping his son prepare for races. And his mother, Sally, still spends a lot of time advocating for her son, and making sure he gets all the support he needs, connecting him, for example with an auditory therapist who finally found a methodology that helped him understand math.

When you have someone like Lee, that's grown this much because of the support system he's always had, the next question is always: what is going to happen when I die? How do I make sure he's still thriving when he doesn't have his parents around to help?

It's a little odd to "prepare to die", but that's exactly why Sally came to JLA Trust as a consulting client. She wanted to make sure that the system she and her husband had built for Lee didn't collapse someday when he didn't have them. Together with our team, she quantified the needs Lee would have as goals, and built a detailed roadmap. We're proud to say that they're 95% of the way done with that roadmap now -- and JLA Trust has connected the Passehl family with supports they didn't know existed.

JLA Trust

jlatrust.org | 310.773.9728