Using XML decorations to specify default values during de-serialization

I have a problem deserializing some XML; the XML supplied by a third party is quite verbose, so if there is no value set for an particular element, it will supply and empty element (e.g. <element1 />).

This is a problem for certain elements, for example, those that are meant to store integers. I have control over the third party, so I could either get them to specify a default value (<myinteger>0</myinteger>) or I can get them to omit these elements entirely. Both of these should avoid the problem.

However, there may be situations in future, where we don't have so much control - in which case, is there a way of specifying, perhaps via a decoration, a default value?

    [XmlElement("myinteger")=0???]
    public int MyInteger
    {
        get
        {
            return myInteger;
        }
        set
        {
            myInteger= value;
        }
    }