By RICHARD PeREZ

Despite an imminent deadline, the Bancroft family and even some of its advisers seem sharply split over whether to sell Dow Jones & Company, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal, to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.

The divisions make it almost impossible to handicap whether enough family members will vote in favor of a sale or even whether they can reach any conclusion by the deadline of 5 p.m. today.

The boards of both Dow Jones and the News Corporation are bracing for the possibility that they will not have a definitive answer tomorrow, people close to both boards say, and are trying to determine their next moves, which for Dow Jones could include a general shareholder vote.

“The potential for chaos is high,” said a person close to Dow Jones management who had been briefed on the family’s deliberations but who was not authorized to speak about them.

Even within the Bancroft camp, opposition to the deal is divided. Some family trustees, like Christopher Bancroft and Jane Cox MacElree, are opposed to a sale because they do not care for Mr. Murdoch’s brand of journalism and worry that he would interfere in the news pages of the Journal.

Others, like a group of family trusts controlled by lawyers in Denver, are willing to sell but want to hold out for a 10 to 20 percent premium over the $60-per’share offer News Corporation has made, at least for the supervoting shares of the company. Both Dow Jones and News Corporation have emphatically said they would only consider one price for all shares.

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