The general part of the Borel-Cantelli lemma says that for any sequence of events (An ) defined on a probability space (Ω, Σ, P), the divergence of Σn P(An ) is necessary for P(An i.o.) to be one (see e.g. [1]). The sufficient direction is confined to the case where the An are independent. This paper provides a simple counterpart of this lemma in the sense that the independence condition is replaced by for some . We will see that this property of (An ) may frequently be assumed without loss of generality. We also disclose a useful duality which allows straightforward conclusions without selecting independent sequences. A simple random walk example and a new result in the theory of ϕ -branching processes will show the tractability of the method.