GAAR - any effect on transferring shares to wife?

A member of my family is worried that if he transfers some of his portfolio to his wife, and utilises her annual exempt gain figure when selling shares, it might get caught by the GAAR (i.e. be deemed to have been done purely for the avoidance of tax).

Is it likely that these provisions would be used by the IR to catch something as basic and trivial as this? I had always assumed that they would only use the provision on more material avoidance by large companies. Has anyone any thoughts/experience?
nick jakob