Is the law about this pretty much identical in any state or are there
some radically different examples from various states (i.e. in one
state would never be able to confiscate, in one it wouldn't need a
warrant, etc.)?
In U.S. jurisprudence, the transaction that you describe is called a "fraudulent transfer". The existence of a fraudulent transfer must be established in a separate lawsuit, or in a separate claim within the same lawsuit, or in an adversary action within bankruptcy proceeding, subject to some narrow exceptions for general partners of partnerships for partnership debts and in some jurisdictions for revocable trusts. Sometimes separate fraudulent transfer doctrines apply to people who make or receive distributions from insolvent legal entities or trusts or estates in addition to a more general fraudulent transfer law (the Uniform Fraudulent Transfers Act is part of the law is almost every U.S. jurisdiction and its less expansive predecessor, the Uniform Fraudulent Conveyances Act is part of the law in the rest).
Fraudulent transfer law is fairly uniform in the United States due to the collective adoption of Uniform Acts voluntarily by state legislatures and the impact of the United States Bankruptcy Code (Title 11 of the United States Code). In cases where the bankruptcy code is more favorable than the law outside the bankruptcy code, in certain circumstances, U.S. creditors can also force the debtor into an involuntarily bankruptcy, although in practice, this tool is rarely used because the non-bankruptcy options are adequate.
These doctrines are not more or less uniform across all Western-style legal systems, however, let alone in the case of non-Western legal systems under Islamic, Communist regime, or tribal law, for example.
Many common law jurisdictions other than the United States, including most of the United Kingdom dependencies that are commonly used for asset protection purposes, such as the Cayman Islands and Nevis, also have fraudulent transfer laws (although the exact name of these statutes varies). But, in those jurisdictions the legal standard that must be shown to prevail is much more serious, the statutes of limitations tend to be short, and there are other procedural hurdles to bringing such lawsuits (as well as a debtor friendly judiciary).
Many of these jurisdictions also do not give full faith and credit to judgements entered in other jurisdiction and require the underlying debt to be reestablished legally from scratch in their courts to be enforced against assets in their control. Many (if not most) non-U.S. jurisdictions, likewise, do not honor U.S. tort law case judgments unless reestablished in local courts at least as to damages, even if some facts can be established by virtue of a U.S. court judgment on the merits.
There are also some legal doctrines that impose vicarious liability (i.e. liability without individual fault) on someone other than the person whose actions give rise to the debt. These people are often named as co-defendants in the same lawsuit. This would include members of a household under the family car doctrine, members of a married couple or their close family members under the necessities doctrine between people who have a duty of support for each other, employers for employees, principals for agents, sureties, and guarantors.
In some cases, where the person who transferred the property was a fiduciary for someone (e.g. a trustee, an attorney, an executor, a guardian, or an agent) or was a spouse, it is also possible to bring a separate action (or a separate claim in the same action as the one for the primary debt) to impose a "constructive trust" on the transferred asset which requires the person to whom the asset was transferred to hold the assets received and all proceeds of that asset in trust for the person entitled to it and to deliver it to the person entitled to it as soon as reasonably practicable to do so.
Finally, in some cases, a judgment or monetary obligation can be entered by a court (or sometimes prior to court action, either voluntarily in a mortgage-like instrument, or involuntarily in the case of a tax lien or mechanic's lien, for example) in rem against property. In that case, execution against or legally authorized seizure of the property is authorized without regard to who owns it at the time of the seizure.
In addition to these remedies, it is common in cases involving self-employed debtors in family law cases, in probate cases, and in cases involving asset protection trusts, to hold the debtor and sometimes other responsible individuals who are aware that the transfers were made in an effort to defy a court order or judgment, in contempt of court. Someone held in civil contempt of court in these circumstances can be detained or fined on a daily basis indefinitely until the order is complied with, if the court determines that the person held in contempt of court has the actual ability in practice (even if not as a strict matter of law) to comply. There are cases of people who set up asset protection trusts being incarcerated for as much as a decade for contempt of court.
Similarly, in the case of tax debts, willfully evading collection of tax debts in this manner is not just a civil matter or grounds for a contempt of court citation. It is also a crime (usually a felony) for which the tax debtor and the tax debtors uncooperative coconspirators may be prosecuted and convicted. The punishment for these crimes is typically comparable to the punishment for simple larceny-theft or fraud without violence or wrongful entry onto premises, of comparable dollar amounts.
