Just found out I am adopted after 68 years

[GerryDee]

I was born in 1957 but have just found out I was adopted in 1971, how do I find adoption record? My original name was McGivern, but I lived as Docherty all my childhood at primary school, how can this be if my name was only changed to Docherty in 1971 adoption? I had the same parents all my life as far as i am aware. I can't make any sense of this?

Can't be a regular adoption at the age of 14, without you knowing.
Could be parents were not married at your birth and father was not named, and had to adopt formally? Or he was not your father and had to adopt you

Your Local Authority adoption service may be able to help. I was adopted in the 1950s and just a few years ago, I found that my LA had Social Workers who helped supported adopted adults. They did a search and found some papers from my adoption file that I hadn’t seen before. It didn’t give me the info I was looking for, but it was better than nothing. Your adoption was quite a bit later than mine, so more chance that info still exists. I hope you find what you’re looking for.

In England or Scotland ?
or even Ireland.

As the rules and laws are different in Scotland to England.

Scotland

I’ve seen several cases like this on Mumsnet. Apparently at one time, if parents weren’t married, the father had to adopt in order to gain legal parent responsibility. Your age is similar with other posts I’ve seen.
I’m sorry, this must be very shocking for you. Do you have family members you can speak to?

Also, just to add, I had family me members who lived by names other than the one on their birth certificate. It only came to light after they died.

Yeah it is a huge shock, I have family I can talk to thanks. I have ordered my original birth certificate hopefully I can see who my father is on that. It's just very confusing that I started primary school under a name that was not actually my real name, how the hell can that happen?

If your mum wasn’t married to your dad or separated from your dad and lived with someone else you could have been given his name which was then formalised through adoption later on. It wasn’t unusual for that to happen in the time frame you mention.

Because you can put down any name you like

New update got my original birth certificate this morning through the post. My father is named as William McVey, my other two parents are now dead and neither of them told me about this. I am shocked and full of rage, the bastard that treated me like shit and battered me all my life was NOT my real father. That's one thing i'm actually glad about, but how do I go about finding details about my real father current family I may have that I don't know about and they probably don't know about me?

I'm sorry that must be hard for you. Here are some ideas:

You can use a site called Scotland's People to do ancestry searching.

You can do a dna test through Ancestry.com to see if it picks up any blood relatives.

You can ask your local authority for post adoption support.

Good luck