We present general conditions on Dirac and Majorana mass terms under which a type-I seesaw mechanism can lead to three exactly massless neutrinos at the tree level. We depict several examples where the conditions are satisfied and relate some of them to an underlying U(1) symmetry. We show that higher order corrections may generate the small observed masses and this may be achieved even when the heavy Majorana neutrinos are at the electroweak scale or a little higher. © 2011 American Physical Society.