Legal Question in Family Law in North Carolina

Emails aren't Orders and they aren't filed with a clerk or otherwise. An e-mail can contain an Order but the email itself is not the Order. So the most likely scenario for the situation you described is that if a Judge filed something then it is most likely an Order and a copy of the Order was what was emailed. However, that said, there certainly isn't anything wrong with a VA Judge declining to exercise jurisdiction in an email to another Judge but it is unlikely that e-mail would be considered an Order or file in any way.