Let us consider the following xml document:

```
<contact>
    <name>Hines</name>
    <phone>206-555-0144</phone>
    <mobile>425-555-0145</mobile>
</contact>

```

from which I retrieve a value as

```
var value = parent.Element("name").Value;

```

The code above will throw a `NullReferenceException` if "name" is not present, as Element will return null in C# but not in vb.net which will throw empty value. 

So my problem is to identify when the xml nodes below the root node are missing and to get an empty value instead.