Starting from a brief presentation of the historical development of the resolution of family-law disputes within the Croatian legislation, the paper analyzes family mediation in the role of a partially new institute. Family mediation as we know it today was introduced by the Family Law of 2015. Family mediation is approached by the parties in cases of the need to resolve family legal disputes, most often during the divorce of parents of minor children. The mediator provides assistance and support to the parties and directs the process respecting the principles of voluntariness, impartiality and privacy; through five process stages. The process consists of a preparation phase, an introduction phase, a story phase, a problem-solving phase, and an agreement phase. In this work, emphasis is placed on the stages and goals of the implementation of the family mediation procedure. The main goal of family mediation is to reach a plan of common parental care and other agreements related to the child. The procedure is initiated at the request of the party, and the exception to voluntariness exists only in the situation when the parents, before the divorce, did not reach a plan on common parental care during the implementation of the mandatory counseling procedure. In this case, the parents are obliged to attend the first family mediation meeting. The process ends with the adoption of a common parental care plan or another agreement.