Do I need to shred Grandma's bills if she died 25 years ago?

Give yourself a treat, and take all old documents to a business that does Confidential shredding "by the pound" cost. Be kind to yourself, but don't toss things into a town trash.

Yes! Shred them. Not necessarily because of any liability to your family (although thieves could make it hard and expensive for your family to clean up a mess) but because of thieves defrauding other people with her identity.

No

If it were financial-related material, yes. Otherwise, you're fine tossing those old bills.

check Fedex, Office Depot, and see if there is a local shredder near you.
also, our city has a free shredding day once every month. You can bring one or two file boxes, drop them off..

I just broke my shredder... too many papers jammed I suppose... And I hear that paper makes a good start for composting? Not sure if they meant paper with ink...

But it may be good as layer before mulch

Honestly, probably not. I burn them or throw them in the trash. I can't see that anyone is going to go digging grandma's papers out of the town dump.

I know nowadays they say everything should be shredded. I'm 85 and in my day nothing was shredded. It was all put in the garbage or burnt. Not saying shredding isn't a good thing and necessary some times for security reasons, but I don't think this is one of those times.

They have mobile shredding where they come to you. When we did it over 10 years ago the cost was about 200. Now I don't know but it may be worth it to Google mobile shredding in your city and get a rough idea of the cost.

I'm talking about boxes and boxes of papers. Her death was reported twenty-five years ago.

I wish I could burn them but I don't have any way to do that.

You can take them in bags to the UPS Store near you and they will weigh them and shred them. You're charged according to weight. It's not real expensive and provides some peace of mind if that's what you need.

Assuming it's too much to face shredding at home, you can probably find a commercial service which will take it away for a modest fee. Google "confidential waste disposal in [your area]."

No.

I burn them but we live the country and we can. Or when we go camping, I bring them to burn in the fire pit.

I've thrown newer papers directly into the trash myself. Nothing bad ever came of it.

No. Even if someone was able to use her SSN, she won't be scammed out of anything since she's deceased. If you were joint on a bank account with her since that time and still have that same account, or was joint with her on any other financial or asset account, that'd be the only thing to be worried about that I can think of.

Also, criminals are lazy and it's much easier to scam through other means rather than rooting through people's garbage.

How much stuff are we talking about?

I am assuming you reported her death to the credit agencies?
I would shred any important papers. Nothing done now with them will hurt you directly, but no sense giving people things to play with.